Guild Wars 2

@Robert Hrouda

Masters Bond, Beastmastery Trait is practically worthless because we change pets so frequently, or they die so frequently you can not make good use of this trait.

Why not make it so that Masters Bond actually creates a Bond with our pet(s), and they get 10% of our total stats, across the board? This way every pet is unique to its Masters build.

I get why people ask for the stowing of pets. The main issue is pets randomly agroing enemies due to pathing issues when passive. If this was dealt with I think people would have less of an issue. You could always swap to a Raven in jumping puzzles, it’s not like they will block the camera too bad.

Robert can I just say that you’ve been a light in the darkness recently for the Ranger community and I personally am very glad to know someone is watching the class.

Now onto my post. This isn’t a major issue per say but it greatly irks me. Could we get some icon and model fixes with the pets? The icon for the River drake is nothing like what the model is and the actual River Drakes in Queens dale look so much better than the one we get. (capturing a juvenile completely changes its model) and the same goes for the Swamp Drake it’s not even close to it’s portrait.

Additionally can we have a look at the Beast master traits related to the pet? Master’s bond is currently very useless because as far as I can tell the mechanic wants us to be swapping pets very often and on a related note rampage as one suffers from this as well as the pet benefits aare completely lost on swap. Also perhaps a look at the “stat” we gain from our Beast mastery tree? a 30 stat bonus to pets at 30 points really isn’t worth it at all.

Leash range settings: allow the player to input an integer value that controls the maximum distance a pet will wander from the player before auto sprinting back to them.

Setting it short enough might allow a player to basically yank a pet out of a potential AE a mob is doing if they dodge early enough and the leash range is short enough.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I like the recommendations about the f1 key being more versatile. I certainly think there is something more to be done there with it. When we talk about these things internally, I will be sure that we take a long look at all the F-key commands and see what improvements can be made. I personally favor toggles that allow you more control (what if F1 was both “attack” and “return!” that got toggled? What does that free up? Could F5 be a thing?). There are lots of options to explore.

If you do F1 as toggle for attack and return, you can streamline the system even more. In fact, the pet dodge mechanic, if implemented, could be folded into the “return” side of the toggle. That way, F3 could be used for a bindable active/passive pet mode.

Alternatively, what would be REALLY good is if F3 could be a selectable Shout skill. The Shout skills always felt like it’s something that should’ve come standard with pets instead of being separate utilities. If you let F3 be a selectable Shout skill, it’ll greatly benefit a lot of builts and put more diversity back into the class.

While on the subject of Shout skills, I always felt “Guard” was unnecessary. That should come standard with the pet being in passive mode. Saying you can’t make your pet guard is like saying you bought a car with no radio. You shouldn’t have to pay extra to get something that basic. You can take the associated buffs away if you wish but the act of guarding should be a basic task doable by default. During the beta, which had no Shout skills available, my initial assumption was that putting a pet in passive mode would enable the pet to guard a small radius around me, essentially the current “Guard” skill. It makes far more sense to have Guard by default in which the pet will protect me if necessary instead of it watching its owner being attacked. Something like this also changes the flow of fights so you can dictate the terms of the fight instead of having your pet to try and chase down the target.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I added health and stamina bar placement just to put it on the list, but those feel like more cosmetic changes than gameplay experience altering changes. I certainly think there is a time and a place for those recommendations, but for this thread let’s just stay focused on the chore mechanics that could be improved and ways that they can be adjusted.

I like the recommendations about the f1 key being more versatile. I certainly think there is something more to be done there with it. When we talk about these things internally, I will be sure that we take a long look at all the F-key commands and see what improvements can be made. I personally favor toggles that allow you more control (what if F1 was both “attack” and “return!” that got toggled? What does that free up? Could F5 be a thing?). There are lots of options to explore.

There have been some calls for perma-stowed pets, and while I have said this in other areas I will say it again here. I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package. Right now the micromanage is difficult and more tools are desired, and I honestly feel that once we make micromanaging pets easier, more responsive, and better in general that players won’t mind that they don’t have perma-stow capabilities.

I wouldn’t suggest that F1 be toggled with attack and return to me. The natural tendency when a player sense that a button is not executing as intended is to press the button again.Pets attack is a problem by itself being that it usualy does not connect well nor connect fast.Toggling atk and return to me using the F1 button might not be a good idea.

F1,F2,F4 should remain as it is. F3 could include with dodge and return to me(Same mechanic as player stamina)
The current toggle that we have which is just 2 modes and not assigned to any button can be the new F5. The various toggle mode that you might include is
1) Offensive mode-atk any enemy on sight or those that dealt damage to pet or ranger
2) Defensive mode- Follows ranger closely and attack any enemy that damages ranger only
3) Territorial mode- Attacks any enemy within XXX meters of ranger
4)Passive mode – does not attack any enemy and follow very closely and exactly behind ranger only,does not move anywhere else to the left or right,
5)Protective mode- does not attack any enemy but absorb XX percentage of damage every XX seconds
6)Kite mode-Attacks first target that ranger attacks only,does not change target even if ranger changes his target until first target dies.

there is various toggle modes you can expand on but number 4) will be a good alternative to permanent stow

I already said it once much earlier on in this thread … but I want to reiterate my respect for Robert Hrouda coming to these forums. He bascially entered the lions den.

The honest feedback and responses we are getting in this thread are great. Interaction with a dev about a core ranger mechanic … really cool.

Well… Two things that kind of bug me about pets.

Firstly, a sit button. Unless you use a utility spot to be able to use Guard every once in a while, there’s nothing to allow you tell your pet to stop moving. In Ascalon Catacombs we had a lot of bother with the pressure plates because we had to leave someone standing on them. But even worse… I came across an event where you fight “the final boss” in the Infinity Coil, to open up the dungeon there. There was two people attempting to take him down, but we all realised he would just teleport away and deaggro, we eventually tried spreading out across the platforms and each fighting him solo when he teleported in our area, being able to get my pet to sit on one of the platforms to catch him before he deaggros would have been extremely nice.

My second one is attack speed. As much as big numbers are entertaining, having a pet that doesn’t attack attack quickly means you’ve got a companion that spends more time sitting around than anything else. Birds are extremely prominent with this, Cats (their primary competitor since both are precision based pets) attack far faster. I mean sure, it hits twice with their regular attacks twice, there’s no benefit from that because cats attack much faster.

Wish we had even tenth of this level of interaction on necro forums.

I’m afraid there is no one in Anet playing necro and therefore no one to push the cause, similar to how orphans are left unwanted by their parents forever doomed to have the harder start and worse life.

First off, thanks for posting Robert, as you’ve made my week for that.

Whoever made the idea of giving pets a distortion like effect, I agree with that idea. Hell, make it their ‘dodge’ function, and call it “Survival Instinct”.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I added health and stamina bar placement just to put it on the list, but those feel like more cosmetic changes than gameplay experience altering changes. I certainly think there is a time and a place for those recommendations, but for this thread let’s just stay focused on the chore mechanics that could be improved and ways that they can be adjusted.

I like the recommendations about the f1 key being more versatile. I certainly think there is something more to be done there with it. When we talk about these things internally, I will be sure that we take a long look at all the F-key commands and see what improvements can be made. I personally favor toggles that allow you more control (what if F1 was both “attack” and “return!” that got toggled? What does that free up? Could F5 be a thing?). There are lots of options to explore.

There have been some calls for perma-stowed pets, and while I have said this in other areas I will say it again here. I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package. Right now the micromanage is difficult and more tools are desired, and I honestly feel that once we make micromanaging pets easier, more responsive, and better in general that players won’t mind that they don’t have perma-stow capabilities.

I wouldn’t suggest that F1 be toggled with attack and return to me. The natural tendency when a player sense that a button is not executing as intended is to press the button again.Pets attack is a problem by itself being that it usualy does not connect well nor connect fast.Toggling atk and return to me using the F1 button might not be a good idea.

F1,F2,F4 should remain as it is. F3 could include with dodge and return to me(Same mechanic as player stamina)
The current toggle that we have which is just 2 modes and not assigned to any button can be the new F5. The various toggle mode that you might include is
1) Offensive mode-atk any enemy on sight or those that dealt damage to pet or ranger
2) Defensive mode- Follows ranger closely and attack any enemy that damages ranger only
3) Territorial mode- Attacks any enemy within XXX meters of ranger
4)Passive mode – does not attack any enemy and follow very closely and exactly behind ranger only,does not move anywhere else to the left or right,
5)Protective mode- does not attack any enemy but absorb XX percentage of damage every XX seconds
6)Kite mode-Attacks first target that ranger attacks only,does not change target even if ranger changes his target until first target dies.

there is various toggle modes you can expand on but number 4) will be a good alternative to permanent stow

I like the idea of adding a Protective Mode, or making Passive mode have that ability, but giving the mode change a cooldown, like 5-10 seconds. That way it can’t be abused very much.

ok, the ideal, from reading through, seems to be

-shared AR with owner

-have F1 toggle attack and return-to-me

-F2 should be instant

-F3 pet dodge-roll/aegis (aegis for 5 seems simpler)

-pets need to hit moving targets far more reliably.

-do what you can for pathing. (to me this is really a L2P thing, use F4 to swap and avoid pathing issues.)

later, eh?

Stale

Why don’t they just copy the WoW model. Leave direct damage attacks on pets the same, but have non direct damage such as AoE’s or hits from a cleave attack do much less damage on pets. Of course if the cleave attack was directed to the pet then it should do full damage.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package.

Sigh

Even if it’s an opt-out sort of thing? I’m not going to lie, I think many people who choose ranger aren’t choosing to play the “beast-master” class you have in mind. I want to be the nature-themed archer who’s not too shabby with a sword.

The problem with pets is that if you want to spec into a standard damage dealing role, you’re kitten The way things are currently set up /every/ build needs at least 5 points in Beast Mastery, and I would argue anything less than 15 is kitten I would like to spec P/P/Crit, and hit up there with the big boys. But that’s too bad, isn’t it? You need to depend on this antiquated AI that would work great in wow, but not in a game with far better designed and more fluid combat.

When I first started playing, honestly I didn’t know much about the game, friends told me it was a good game worthy of my time, so I bought it. Getting to the class selection screen I see Ranger, immediately my mind goes to Aragorn, the coolest guy to have never existed, apart from maybe James Bond. Go through, see pet selection screen. Great, a wow clone, I’m a hunter. Sigh Well at least I can spec marksmen and ignore this irritating tumor every mmo company decides needs to be festering at my side if I decide to choose a nature-based class. As it turns out, the thing dies every two seconds due to an inability to facetank… Huh. Turns out, it’s 40-60% of my damage, even if I spec out. And it dies, unless I micro manage… I’m not incompetent.

I can do that.

I hate doing it.

I don’t get home from a stressful day at work to babysit this occasional excuse for an autistic aoe condition removal.

Why can’t I just play as a guy with a bow who kittens kitten up?

On topic: How about having pets be with you all the time out, but not a part of your damage, and different pets give different f1-4 abilities?

Or how about you bind different pets to your f1-4 abilities and summon them for a short time, and stop calculating them as a part of my damage…

Why should when I see the indicator to dodge go off I have to press 2 keys while everyone else has to press one?

Edit: Two more things.

1) Don’t balance around open world, that’s ridiculous. Open world is already so easy, that making rangers suck slightly “better” at it wouldn’t be a terrible thing. Not to mention as easy as you think the game is for two rangers, it’s just as easy for two theives/warriors/mesmers/guardians.

2) Remember fun? Micromanagement isn’t fun… Try and keep fun in mind please. It can be rewarding for some individuals, and I’m not opposed to it being an option, but the returns from said management should be… Dare I say… Diminishing?

Pendleton.6385:

I already said it once much earlier on in this thread … but I want to reiterate my respect for Robert Hrouda coming to these forums. He basically entered the lions den.

The honest feedback and responses we are getting in this thread are great. Interaction with a dev about a core ranger mechanic … really cool.

This!
I’ll add my appreciation. Thank you for taking the time to hear the rangers’ feedback and discussing possible ideas for fixes to issues we’ve expressed. I’ll also add that we rangers need to be patient and allow the Devs to work through their process so it’s done correctly.

Again Robert, thank you for the open dialogue and discussion.
—Zonian

Is it possible to just give pets a buff when in dungeons? This would not affect PvP or open world at all.

For example pets would get something like a stat buff while in a dungeon instance.

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 much better and is starting to sound good which makes me happy. another thing mentioned is that pets often stray. in places like AC, the troll’s AoE circle is so large that even a recalled pet can’t get out because it doesn’t run far enough. they tend to come back but stop 15 feet short of you unless you back up and in many places that isn’t an option. having pets return to your side or behind you would also help a lot.

So I was thinking about what everyone’s said in these posts. Most of the points are dead-on accurate, but some of them I’m not so sure about. For example, I personally haven’t really had any major issues with keeping my pets alive in dungeons.

Then again, I am playing a melee ranger with two bears and a bucketload of health regeneration. There’s not much that’ll kill the pets outright and the stuff that will is telegraphed way ahead of time.

That being said, there are still a lot of hits that pets take that they really don’t need to be taking. Often times they’ll stick around to finish off an attack or whatever before they bug out and so get clipped by something that hurts them badly.

So, yeah… I think something needs to be done there. Maybe not a complete overhaul or anything, but definitely some kind of change to make the pet controls a little more responsive so that players can leverage their finesse to keep the pets alive.

I gave it some thought and based on the ideas of other people came up with how I’d change the pet mechanics to make them work a little more nicely.

So before I get into it all, let me start by saying that the last thing anyone wants to be doing is further complicating the profession mechanics. The ranger already has quite a lot of micromanagement to deal with. There’s no sense adding more of it. Similarly, too much change is not necessarily a good thing. Consequently, I’ve tried to keep things as simple and logical as possible without re-inventing the wheel (as it were).

With that in mind, these changes wouldn’t affect the F2 or F4 keys which would continue working just as they do now. The stow and buttons would be removed completely (cleaning up some of the UI) and their functionality rolled into more context-sensitive uses for F1 and F3.

The pet would have still two modes of operation: passive and active.

In passive mode, the pet would not fight at all and would never aggro mobs. It would essentially act as eyecandy. You’d still get the sense that you were running along with your bestest animal buddy, but you wouldn’t have to deal with all the annoying micro-management that has so far entailed.

In passive mode, the F1 key would function as a command to Attack. Pressing this key would immediately Optimus Prime the pet to you (magically teleporting it to your side), switch the pet to active mode, and then sets its target (as described below).

F3 in passive mode would effectively replace the Stow ability. It would be a toggle between Heel and Stay. Pressing F3 would command the pet to Stay. It would sit down and stop following you, refusing to move from the spot until you either change pets or call it to Heel by pressing F3 again.

If the pet was close enough to do so easily, it would simply run over to you when commanded to heel. Otherwise, it would just teleport. Either way, there would be no messy pathfinding to deal with or trains of mobs to ruin your day.

In active mode, the pet would attack whatever enemies get within a relatively short range of you (say 600 or so). It would otherwise behave normally (and is capable of generating aggro normally).

In active mode, pressing F1 would set or clear the pet’s target. Pressing F1 with a target selected would cause the pet to prioritize and attack only that target. Pressing the key again or pressing it without a target selected would revert the pet to its normal behaviour — attacking either your current target or, if you don’t have one, whatever is within range.

Pressing the F3 key in active mode would be context-sensitive. If you aren’t in combat, pressing F3 would would immediately toggle the pet to passive mode and recall it to your side.

In combat, however, pressing F3 would cause the pet to dart backwards, evading all attacks as it does so. It would then wait a second before resuming its attacks (this would aid it in avoiding bigger attacks as well as allowing a window of opportunity for the next usage of the key).

Pressing F3 during the brief time after a dodge would recall the pet to you. It would automatically switch itself to passive mode once you get out of combat, but until then would continue to take damage, generate aggro, and so on.

As far as the pet dodging goes, it should probably have an endurance-based limit similar to that used by players. That way a boon like Vigor would actually be useful for pets. To keep things relatively simple, the pets should only have a single dodge available at any given time. The recharge for the pet’s dodge could easily be represented to the player as a boon-duration-style border around the F3 icon.

So, there you go…

“every time I used it I could make a DBZ Abridged joke to my mates on TS.”

0_0 woah, did a dev just make a reference to my sig?

The latest patch made me quit my Ranger. Now I feel bad lol. Then again my Zerkermancer is pretty amazing, not gonna lie…

Leaf.3156:

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.

It’s a balance, having a pet isn’t an open invitation for turning the class into some e-sport Starcraft APM click-fest to perform at par in high end content. There needs to be a compromise between pet AI and the required player micromanagement (why have an AI if micromanagement is required to the point where the player is essentially playing two characters when a warrior only has to worry about one to achieve the same/superior result). Another issue would be pulling a bait and switch, don’t launch with a class that doesn’t require crazy micromanagement at launch and then evolves to require a lot of it post-launch.

On the idea of removing return to me and having that functionality given to changing stances, I think in WoW, the attack/don’t attack command is the same button. It would be cool if you changed F1 so that pressing it once commanded my pet to attack, but pressing it a second time (while targeting the same target) would command it to return (if it’s a new target, it will go to the new target instead of returning). I hate key bloat, removing the need to click stances or find a new key to press would help this situation imo.

Perma stowing pets is important for situations which involve stealth. A thief using shadow refuge which now caps at five people – the party size – which prevents the pet from receiving stealth, if a thief does it mid combat – say for example in the dredge fractal to help the team take down the door with the guns – the pet will still be visible and can easily cause a party wipe. Another issue is when players choose to “skip content” like in HotW path 1. You constantly have to stow your pet when jumping down terrain otherwise the pet will run the long way around and aggro every mob the party just skipped. If the ranger is in combat for whatever reason, he can’t make the jumps until the pet is dead otherwise he will cause a party wipe. These kinds of burdens specific to the class are unnecessary.

On the aggro issue, pets will not stop at the same location a ranger stops at when running somewhere. Often the pet will run ahead of the ranger, sometimes further than leap distance. It doesn’t happen all the time and it can usually be avoided by giving pets a wide berth, but the pet running so far ahead of me when I stop moving is really unhelpful when it aggros the next mob before the group is ready. Tightening the leash might be helpful.

Another issue that hit pets that is kind of relevant to dungeons was lowering their priority on the boons totem poll. Pets now only receive a boon if all five party members aren’t in the AoE. A lot of ranger builds and skills which focused on the ranger buffing his pet are no longer viable because the pet won’t recieve these boons even if you wanted them to (so a build which uses Fortifying Bond to give the pet double buffs from Call of the Wild will not be viable because you can’t reliably buff the pet). This five target boon cap hurts ranger and pet viability in general, because rangers don’t get 100% class efficiency out of a boon on themselves (our own DPS is intentionally lower because a pet exists) might stacks on a ranger aren’t as effective as might stacks on a warrior because ranger DPS is spread across two toons, each with their own boon stacks and pets will rarely receive any with the functionality change of boons. It might be worthwhile to allow up to five pets to be affected by boons in addition to the five allies (remove pets from the allies list).

There are other issue like pets having their own red ring of death for boss AoE (like the Nightmare tree in F/U path with the egg sack bombs – a warrior standing in place will get hit by one bomb, a ranger standing in place will get hit by both his bomb and the pet bomb, regardless of whether you can dodge it or not, the pet can’t dodge it and if a ranger makes a mistake, he suffers twice as much as other classes, especially when sending the pet in to attack isn’t an option because of spider aggro). Pets will continue to be targeted by these kind of attacks, even when they are downed (like the Maw attack, it will still target a downed pet.

Pets won’t attack many environmental objects (even ranged pets). The Elemental Source in the Snowblind Fractal and the Eternal Flame in Magg’s path of Citadel of Flame suffer from this problem.

Hi Robert!
I was wondering if the devs could have the boons, conditions, etc of pets show up on screen at all times without clicking on the pet (maybe on the side of the screen? or above the pet icon?)? And a numerical health bar for the pet? It would help a lot for rangers to monitor/control their pet; it would be a nice balancing of professions without implementing actual numerical buffs Thank you!!! You are a legend!

PS. I know the devs have already patched the unresponsive F2 button, but it would be nice if they sped the F2 button a little more.

I have nothing to add except that I am grinning from ear to ear reading this thread. Thanks Robert.

Alright let be honest about this? The pet swapping is not going to help anything. You need to account for the trait which reduce the cool down., and if am not mistaking that is a master trait which mean one have to spec deep into beastmastery to get a full Benefit of the pet dodge. We need to take other builds into Consideration here. People asking for button of a sort for as to enable our pet to dodge is Seriously ridiculous. If am spec for trap build and most of the damage come from my traps why should I be taking the time to manage my pet to avoid and AOE when I should be concentrating on placing my next trap. The whole pet system need a rework., either by giving pet their own traits which allow them to reduce the damage they take or you give them flat damage Reduction in AOE damage.

It can be a mix of the suggested ideas.
For example : F3 skill gives pet a buff to avoid damage and so does dodging.
It doesn’t have to be the same buff, and there can be a shared cool-down to both mechanics or pet’s endurance consumption.

Edit : Pet already gets 2second protection on dodge if traited.

There are dungeons where pets just have no chance, like CoE p2/3 alpha. I know there are more but I can’t think of them at the moment. The thing is though, If you’re any good at pet management it’s normally not an issue in pretty much all normal cases.

I personally find the issue with ranger is that the weapons are all incredibly boring/slow/based entirely on autos.

I think pets are just too much of our damage. They should be at about 20% without any investment in BM. If more of the damage was shifted to the ranger, adding some more toughness, a cap on health lost to a single hit, or a dodge mechanic wouldn’t be as much of a balance concern.

Also, since we can’t revive our pet in combat and the pet swap timer is so long, could we get some sort of downed skill for our pet? Maybe change F1-F4 so that we can go send it to a corner and have it use lick wounds on itself? That or have healing skills and regen work towards reviving it.

Merely a suggestion, but maybe it would help if we could ‘customize’ the pets in some way. Maybe, give rangers the ability to switch or train the abilities from one pet to another.

For example, train your lynx to have the devourer’s retreat ability. In this way, each ranger can modify their pet’s ability to their play-style.

Just a suggestion.

Robert Hrouda, you’re doing great, thanks a lot.

I was wondering if pet customization is going to be in the game at some point? As I see it, it would allow me to set the order in which the pets use their skills or even disable skills.

For example, I really liked the spider pets, especially with the trait that causes cripple on their F2 attack and their personal skill that immobilizes. However, they also have a personal skill that shoots an area of effect poison, which misses every time the battle is mobile. So basically 9 out of the 10 times he uses that skill it misses and the pet that should be doing cripple or immobilize is basically doing nothing for me. The animation is also long and slow, so it’s really frustrating to not have any control over it. I completely stopped using spiders because of it. If I could customize the skills, I would disable the poison or give it the lowest priority, so it wouldn’t be used unless all its other skills are on cooldown. It would be nice if he used the poison right after he used the immobilize skill, but that only randomly happens.

The pet menu is already in the game, it just needs the added customization functionality.

On a side note, it might also be nice to be able to give the F2 skill in control of the pet as well, but it’s not even remotely as important as being able to set priority to skills or disable them.

I know pets don’t even have their own names because of the amount of data it would cost, but I hope these priority settings won’t have to be sent to each client that comes near the pet.

Rob,

As a WvW ranger, I feel we really get the shortest end of the stick when it comes to pets. We all agree pets are great at open world pve and even sPvP.

What, if anything, can be done about the terrible lack of survivability and versatility of pets in WvW where AoE is everywhere and pets are always dead?

Since you’ve shot down AoE reduction (which has been my go to fix for this problem) I have one other suggestion I hope you will consider. Buff devourers in 2 areas. Range, and projectile speed. Make their range 1200 or even 1500 and significantly increase their projectiles speed so they can actually hit moving targets in wvw. Also maybe they could hit an enemy on a wall or from a wall!

They would become more turret-like for sure, but at least we could potentially have a LIVING pet in WvW. I can’t see how this would negatively impact PvE. Can you? It seems only fair that somebody should have to target my pet for 5-10 seconds to kill it rather than just have it explode randomly from AoE in WvW.

Much respect for entering into this conversation and I hope you understand that this community feels like we’ve been ignored and scorned for a long time.

Would it be possible to train pets to dodge effectively? By that I mean that with a red ring attack, the ring has a radius and a center, can’t their AI be told to dodge to the outside of that radius when they are within a circle? Likewise, any time they are in the target radius of a melee “wind-up” attack (like Ettins use), they should dodge away.

I do also second the idea that the “pet survivability fix” should be focused more on a passive effect than an active one. Players should not have to manually dodge their pets, as well as themselves, as well as using their abilities as they become available. There are already too many factors to juggle to require player involvement every time they want to pets to avoid damage.

If players want to Micromange their pets then there are pet utilities for that, but micromanaging should not be seen as the solution to the existing problem of pets being too squishy. Basically, if a player takes a relatively hands off approach to their pets then the pets should be reasonably survivable, about equivalent to a DPS player that knows how to dodge big hits. If they then choose to, on top of that, micromanage the pets defenses, then the pet would be survivable equivalent to a tanky player, pretty much unkillable so long as the player is on top of his game (but of course requiring a lot more attention and drawing resources away from the Ranger’s DPS options) .

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”

Better than what we’ve got, but jamming F3 whenever I see the pet in trouble would be a lot of micromanaging, way more than on any other class. Many only have one button up there.

I’d like to add, that sometimes (very often) I press the f3 button & the pet doesn’t move for 2-3 seconds, which is more than enough time for it to get obliterated in a red circle. Anyhow I really like where this is going, if RH manages to push the f4-f5 pet dodge button through, then the only major ranger problem (in dungeons at least) that remains will be the low LB dmg at max range..

Hi Robert and a heartfelt thank you is in order, I guess…

Here some thoughts from me about the pet and maybe even the ranger.

Ilove to play a pet class – always did in any MMO if possible.
I think the reason why people want a perma stow for the pet is, that its really not worth it at the moment.

We are the only class where the “Special (F2)” can die (and does too easily) because of clunky AI and not well thought out mechanics… many of the pets F2 functions just take too long to trigger … the much discussed “dodge” from AEs I wont mention any more because I think we are on a good way here in this thread.

I think that when the pets work better (they have to stay close to me and not be 15 meters away from me when I stop etc) the “we need a perma stow” cries will thin out.

At the moment – in my opinion – our class of flavour is built around a half functioning liability called pet (which not even remembers its own name).

Thanks again for hanging in there with us – I for one will continue to treat you respectful – because thats what my mother learned me when she raised me… ;-)

While every other class can use their full power/DPS on a boss/enemy/invader 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.

Thank you Robert – the radio silence here was becoming deafening.

First, some of the suggestions made that concern me: “make attack/return a single toggle key” and “F1 switches to attack mode, F3 switches to passive mode”.
Misterdevious pointed this one out. Right now, our commands are fairly “panic proof”. F1 always attacks, F2 always uses a special, F3 always returns, no matter how much you mash them. Particularly in hectic situations like WvW and some dungeons, it is impossible to target accurately, and to tell if or what your pet is attacking. F1 or F3 being an attack/return toggle could make this unnecessarily state-dependent. Pets being generally slow to react compounds the problem, and invites repeated pressing. I know I’m not the only one who presses the same button repeatedly in these situations.
As for F1 and F3 switching modes automatically, I can’t be the only one who likes being able to remain in passive mode, tell my pet to go kill one thing, and then immediately come back when done. I also like being able to remain in attack mode, and use F3 to tell my pet to keep out of the fight for a bit. I do still think the mode switch needs a keybind (F5 perhaps).

Things that bite me, and my perspectives on possible solutions:

Slow reactions on F2 and F3.
No real further explanation needed here, but I’m glad it’s got some attention already.

Pets limping around dead in combat with no way to help them.
I suggest F2 on downed pets becomes a channeled heal.
The 60 second swap is punishing because it often cannot be avoided even with skillful play. F1 and F3 are also useless when the pet is dead, but F3 is likely to be hit just as the pet dies, and could inadvertently begin a channel. F2 is usually a more considered choice. This could let a ranger take a few seconds out of doing damage to get the rest of their abilities and damage back. It would also avoid the interact-key heal problems from the beta weekends.

Attacking pets dying to avoidable attacks…
I suggest F3 evasion/distortion/aegis…
This is a two-parter. Locking pet dodge to player dodge would be simple, but most times I want only myself or only the pet to dodge. At range, F3 can sometimes help, but in melee, F3 does very little as the pet remains in the fray. A second or two of evasion/distortion/aegis instantly upon hitting F3 (with a cooldown/endurance limit) would augment the purpose people use that key for in the first place, and would give time for the pet to get moving. I definitely agree with those who don’t want more buttons, so giving F3 the dual purpose of running to me and avoiding certain doom is my preferred solution.

…and to unavoidable AOEs in champion fights.
…and increased traited protection for pets on dodge.
The 33% protection on dodge is good, but not enough to save a pet from the instant-kill AOEs in dungeons that not even a recall will save them from. Requiring the player to use F3 and dodge themselves is a sub-optimal solution, as many have pointed out. Increasing the damage reduction on pets from protection (possibly at the expense of its duration) could go toward solving this.

Passive pets drawing unwanted aggro and moving into AOEs.
I suggest shorter passive leashing.
Whether the pet takes the long way around a rock, or runs 5 meters past you after you stop moving, pets in passive mode have an incredible knack for drawing aggro, or wandering into stray AOEs. Passive mode acting more like a “heel” command, and keeping the pet within GS range (for example) may help solve this problem. A pet in guard/aggressive/gregarious mode could still wander further away. A pet in passive/heel/shy mode would do its best to trail the ranger at a close distance, allowing the ranger to easily “drag” the pet out of danger zones.

Pets un-stowing when taking environmental damage.
I suggest giving stow a keybind (F3 while out of combat).
I understand the desire for trap and falling damage to drop to combat mode, but even falling short distances creates significantly more annoyance for rangers than it does for other classes while traveling (for me, clicking that tiny button after each fall). Giving stow a keybind would shrink this annoyance without having to separate combat and environmental damage conceptually. As stow has no purpose while in combat, and F3 has no purpose while out of combat, an additional press of F3 seems to be a good stow binding.

That post grew much larger than I was expecting… I’m just excited that someone is listening. Thanks for reading!

P.S. Ratty, I like your suggestions.

The Idea with the F-Keys is the way to go imho. In this case we can blame our skill instead of an bad AI. Also we would feel more connected with the pet if we could controll it in a more direct manner. People would start to learn how to use the pet in a better way instead of ignoring it and leave it die without even trying.
Also there is way more to do with the ranger class, I think to give us more control with the F-Keys is a good step in the right direction. And if the F2 ability is popping more reliable and faster I can see myself doing pretty awesome stuff with it.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I added health and stamina bar placement just to put it on the list, but those feel like more cosmetic changes than gameplay experience altering changes. I certainly think there is a time and a place for those recommendations, but for this thread let’s just stay focused on the chore mechanics that could be improved and ways that they can be adjusted.

I like the recommendations about the f1 key being more versatile. I certainly think there is something more to be done there with it. When we talk about these things internally, I will be sure that we take a long look at all the F-key commands and see what improvements can be made. I personally favor toggles that allow you more control (what if F1 was both “attack” and “return!” that got toggled? What does that free up? Could F5 be a thing?). There are lots of options to explore.

There have been some calls for perma-stowed pets, and while I have said this in other areas I will say it again here. I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package. Right now the micromanage is difficult and more tools are desired, and I honestly feel that once we make micromanaging pets easier, more responsive, and better in general that players won’t mind that they don’t have perma-stow capabilities.

Then pets that are put on passive at your side shouldn’t be running off in various directions all the time, you can’t control this at all as a player their pathing box or what to call it need to be smaller.

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 manage cats w/o them dying on lupi, I don’t really see how tanky pets require more management. I’d love to see more ranged pets added eventually though, I think we need bees that shoot their stingers (continuing with the bug/arachnid thingies = ranged theme). That and sharks with lasers attached to their frickin’ heads for underwater fights.

But really, the current ranged pets are rather limited on their stat types and I also find a lot of issues with pet swapping (as a beastmaster in melee range for sword) where the pet will not immediately target your target/attack after you swap. They basically waste the entirety of the quickness buff if you have the trait.

OMG a live dev!

Hi Robert, please play some wvw with your ranger. After you have finished crying I will buy you a beverage of your choice to dull the pain of how quickly your pet died and how … errm … ineffective it was. I don’t mean to be rude, I really love the concept of this class but it really does perform poorly in wvw.

I don’t play PvP so I can’t comment … I look forward to offers to buy me a beverage of my choice.

For wvw…

I’d like a single shot “Protect Me” when your pet is at your side. It fits perfectly for the ranger meta and shouldn’t be OP. It should just happen, because that what my pet would do for me!

Pets should be able to detect stealthed players and give you their general direction. Note detect does not mean attack, nor does it mean pin point. Good old guard drake!

Pets without speed boost need to be faster than players without speed boost.

Animations are secondary to effectiveness. I don’t care if makes the animators cry to cut short their pretty animation so my pet actually works. Make the pets work and then worry about fixing any animation issues, and everyone here will take animation glitches for effectiveness every time.

Their needs to be a title for collecting all the pets! Only slightly OT

Robert Hrouda.1327:

That being said, I am a dungeon designer. I don’t do the actual class balance work – I just go to the meetings and make proposals for the folks who actually build this stuff. At the very least I can echo things being said, draft proposals based on feedback from threads like these, and try to convince folks about how much of a priority issues like these should be.

Glad you took the time out to comment Robert. Based on what you say here I have to ask how come this has fallen to you? Why are the people responsible for balancing pets not here, reading, responding and taking things on board? It is unfair on you but very welcome by every player that someone has taken the time. I just feel that it is always you Rob. (time to ask for that raise)

As for the thread, I will just offer an idea based off what I read above; rangers have to press two dodge buttons for both them and then their pet with the latter usually failing on tougher opponents and yes no matter how skilled the player is sometimes you just cannot stop their death. I personally don’t bother calling a pet back unless I know it will have time to react and get out of AoE, very rarely it does. I love the idea of a blink/distortion/aegis effect that was brought up so my suggestion would be that when a ranger dodges it automatically applies aegis or a blink effect to the pet so a ranger really only has to worry about the time of his/her dodge.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

(what if F1 was both “attack” and “return!” that got toggled? What does that free up? Could F5 be a thing?).

I’d prefer that, F1 being attack and return. Then F3 can become a shout that we can select, rather than taking up a utility slot to do the most basic things like stay on a spot.

just my 0.20 about pet commands.

I think it’s possible to keep the number of F-keys down to 4, we just have to separate what we want to do during a fight (that needs a keybind) and what we could do when we’re a less pressing situation.

In combat I rarelly switch stances on pet, I keep it on passive and F1-F3 all the way, I use agressive only in open PvE “lazy mode” so I dont see the need to keybind stances on a key if we can fix a little some F-key.

I’m thinking something like this:

2 Stances (like now)

F1- On passive: The pet will lock on the target and will move back to the ranger if the target is killed
– On Aggressive: The pet will attack the master’s target or the nearest enemy (inside a 600-900 radius) if no target is selected.

F2- On passive: Pet uses the skill on target (or on the place the pet is if it’s a AoE howl etc) and move back to the ranger.
– On Aggressive: Pet uses the skill and attack current target and goes in F1 mode..

F3- : The pet gain distortion and swifness (1-2-N seconds) and move back to ranger current position interrupting skill casting and not attacking new targets until a F1 or a F2 is used. If the pet is near the ranger in a F3 status It goes on a short leash “i’m not here” mode (not gaining aggro, not attacking but still taking damage from AoE or cleaves).
There should be a cooldown on the distortion/swifness buff but not on the F3 command, it could be indicated by a bar or a white line around the F3 icon simulating the “endurance” regen.

F4: as it is now, the pet will pop up near the ranger instantly, it’s important that the pet "remember the prevous pet’s status.

This way I can give my pet all the commands i need (on passive) using only F1-F3, in emergency i can still swap out the pet to save it.

Just my 2 cents

EDIT: Companion´s Defense trait could be upgraded giving distortion to the pet ^^

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We’re aware of a lot of the issues with ranger pets that have been brought up here, so none of this has been surprising so far. We’re working on the core issues I listed, and have been for a while now.

Thanks for answering questions in this dev forgotten forum. But to mee it seems like all the ranger pets could be solved with a simple move. Add a stow button.

for example : F4 “permanently stows ranger pet until is recalled by user again. While pet is stowed ranger gains 30% of first pet’s attributes”. plus you could also apply a small buff on ranger damage when pet is dead (20 – 30% damage increase on ranger with dead pet).

^ This way you give the possibilities to rangers to enjoyed the class the way it was in GW1 (pet optional and not becoming a burden) and Pet rangers not becoming a laughable source of damage in dungeons when their pet is dead.

And another thing, i’ve run some tests on my ranger with some warrior friends. A full tank / bunker warrior still has more damage output than a full berserker ranger. How do you justify that?

First of all thank you Robert. You helped us more than any of those “real class balancers” ever did already.

I like your general idea of changes. Basically fix stuff, work for a longterm solution. Stowing pets might be an emergency fix but it would hurt the class concept. Still this is what I might want to add:

• review traits, some of them seem really awkward or should be merged with other traits (example more damage on crits and more condition damage should become one, influence of +30% pet speed is also questionable)
• reworked/removed traits would leave space for new ones like “if you have a target selected pets spawn next to it when swapped”
• dynamic petswap timer (I think this would adress the problem you described of petswapping abuse versus bosses): it starts with 20/15 seconds but every swap adds 5 seconds until the timer resets when out of combat

Hope this helps. Solutions are possible and atleast concerning the pet this would be a good start. As far as pure number tweaking goes I think Greatsword damage would be something that could be adressed just by that.

Toggle on f1 sounds great.

If you have issues with button spamming, just stop spamming buttons, problem solved

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We’re aware of a lot of the issues with ranger pets that have been brought up here, so none of this has been surprising so far. We’re working on the core issues I listed, and have been for a while now.

That’s what we really needed to hear. Thank you so much for coming here and talking with us.

You mentioned you’re a dungeon designer and not a class balancer, but your role in getting our ideas/thoughts/critiques to the class developers is much appreciated.

Might I ask though, without seeming indelicate, why class balance devs don’t seem to chime in on class forums more often? Seems like this is a constructive and polite thread. And I’m sure all of you guys know what’s up with your aspect of the game. But just popping in to the forums and letting us know does wonders for our morale and enthusiasm. So…thanks again!!!!

One questions which comes to my mind:
What suggestions do reach the devs?
Do they all reach the devs?
Do the devs all read through this thread?
Or does someone filter some suggestions and give them to the devs?

I really hope that every single post will be carefully ready by every dev who has something to do with rangers so that no single (great) idea will be overlooked.
Sure, it’s more work to do, but the more input (=suggestions from here) the better are the chances on a really good solution for us all

I like the idea of pets dodging on return (current F3), and gaining 1 second of aegis when the ranger dodges.

Regarding pet stow, I believe you could achieve a similar but less drastic effect through signets and shouts. For example, a signet that transfers a portion (33%? 50%?) of the pet’s power and precision to the ranger, or a shout that increases duration and/or recharge of F2s in defensive mode. This would allow us to compensate for pet dps loss through buffs or higher direct damage, while maintaining the pet mechanic intact.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Alternative-suggestion-to-Pet-Stow-Signets/first#post1535844

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Suggestion-New-shout/first#post1549039

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.

How is this different from warriors being able to solo half of the dungeon encounters in competitive times to most pugs? Would it be that hard to make NPCs over the pet in situations like this?

I’ve been using a spider and a devourer in FotM for months now. In most dungeons now. I’m really sick of the pet mechanic pushing me into a handful of pet options (particularly ranged) just to get use out of a class mechanic. There are so many pets, I personally don’t think that we should just accept some pets are dramatically more viable than others because the way combat in the game is designed results in a walking corpse a lot of the time.

Shiren.9532:

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.

How is this different from warriors being able to solo half of the dungeon encounters in competitive times to most pugs?

So you want 2 classes to be broken? Please don’t be that kind of guy in this thread.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Pendleton.6385:

I already said it once much earlier on in this thread … but I want to reiterate my respect for Robert Hrouda coming to these forums. He bascially entered the lions den.

The honest feedback and responses we are getting in this thread are great. Interaction with a dev about a core ranger mechanic … really cool.

You all have been very respectful and welcoming. I’ll try to stick around as much as I can. My only fear is not meeting expectations – not in being called names and the like.

That being said, I am a dungeon designer. I don’t do the actual class balance work – I just go to the meetings and make proposals for the folks who actually build this stuff. At the very least I can echo things being said, draft proposals based on feedback from threads like these, and try to convince folks about how much of a priority issues like these should be. My momma taught me “The squeakiest wheel gets the grease” and I hold that to be very true, and I tend to doggedly follow things that I bring up.

We’re aware of a lot of the issues with ranger pets that have been brought up here, so none of this has been surprising so far. We’re working on the core issues I listed, and have been for a while now.

It’s good to know that there is someone more dungeon focused providing class feedback.

While Rangers are obviously most affected by pets in Dungeons, it’s certainly not limited to then either. Mesmers must shatter ASAP, and even then often have Phantasms die before they can attack, and Necros, Guardians, and Engineers are hesitant to use their temporary pets. In fact, most classes have at least one skill type affected by this – some classes just more than others. Rangers and Mesmers are probably most affected since for them it affects mechanics they can’t opt out of, though limiting build options for other professions hurts too.

Have you considered limiting the amount of damage a pet can take so as to avoid them being one-shot? I.e a ranger pet can’t take more than x% of its base max life in damage (I say base because you don’t want to dissuade increasing pet HP).

Perhaps give pets Endurance but make it a pool that absorbs a portion of damage taken, this would provide pets with a quasi-damage evasion mechanic which benefits from Vigor.

Or whenever a Ranger dodges the pet gains a 1-2s evasion buff. Please don’t add more buttons, a Ranger has enough to keep track of without having to time his and his pet’s dodges separately.

All in all, pets/illusions/minions/etc. not scaling with higher end content is a huge issue that limits most players ability to utilize their mechanic or at the very least limits build options (Elementals, Thieves Guild, Turrets, Minions, Spirit Weapons, Illusions), and while I appreciate Robert’s attention here… I really wish a class design person would hop in and provide their take on the issue.