Guild Wars 2

your not going to remove pets from ranger, ranger is THE pet class. I think people who are trying are expecting too much of a shift. just like your not going to remove illusions from mesmer, or kits from engineers, and attunements from ele.

making your pet essentially completely set and forget, is a bad game mechanic, people talk about WoWs solution, but remember wow is a game with and equipment based focus, most of the game and encounters are built around stats, GW is more active, and more about positioning and reaction, hate it or love it, thats the game. Making pets able to survive without positioning/reaction/planning at all, is not a feasible answer in this game. It wasnt even an answer in GW1 with heroes (high level hero play essentially involved actively managing your heroes, position, disabling abilities, enabling, making them target specific enemies etc) and gw1 was more stat focused and less anyhow.

come up with solutions for pets that dont involve making them undefeatable without the player being involved.

that said, i think we can all agree, in most cases the F2 skill needs to be instant or much faster, they have cool downs, its not OP to be able to use an F key with speed, every other class can.

One thing i think is certain, pets are still using a very early monster rule system, probably because they didnt want to tweak it until they got the AI better, still it doesnt work where every other npc, or pc can attack while moving, and has in general quick firing skills. Some skills really make no sense with such long start ups, daze for example, a skill primarily used for interuption, takes like 2 seconds to start, whats that about.

Holland.9351:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Oh, and in regards to the Jade Maw targeting pets, I made the conscious decision to allow it to target non-players. I have the ability to change that, but I prefer not to on the grounds that there is some gameplay there. My pet has made the ultimate sacrifice quite a few times while we res’d a down party members, providing groups with a much needed window to help others up and recover. I know it can be a bit frustrating if everything is going great and you’re not having any problems, but I’d much rather the pet provide a moment of relief for those struggling. I am open to debate on the subject, but that is for threads over in the dungeon forum, not here

I too like it when Jade Maw targets a pet when we’re in trouble, but find it annoying when we’re not in trouble. I, again, think that this is another example where a permanent stow is required. If it doesn’t go well, leave the pet out, if it’s going smooth, stow the pet permanently.

There are so many situations where a permanent stow would be perfect. I’m not talking about giving the ranger a buff for stowing the pet.

Yes you want rangers to use the pet and they will, but sometimes they need to be put away at the player’s own discression. “Avoid Combat” should make stow permanent, while “Guard” should leave stow as it works now (but neither should react to falling damage)

edit: by the way, Jade Maw targets dead pets too

Again you know that killing tenticals kills the boss not just crystals….. and it does it at about the same rate.

@Robert

I was wondering if you’ve ever thought of adding “Search and Rescue” as a permanent pet skill, in the pet UI bar, instead of it being a utility skill? I think it would add a lot more value to the pet, especially in dungeons.

I see a lot of Ranger players sending their melee pet off to its death, in the hopes of dealing out some more damage, and then just use pet switch to do the same with the next pet, once the first one is dead. I think this is because damage in itself isn’t really considered a value, as you can already deal a lot of damage yourself as a Ranger, and the pet is only good for dealing damage if you aren’t using any shouts (F2 support skills really aren’t that powerful on their own). But if you gave the pet some more value, maybe more Ranger players would learn to take better care of their pet? I mean, if you always have “Search and Rescue” on the pet, it’s a much bigger sacrifice once you lose it. And it would also have the added bonus of your allies thinking more highly of the pet, because it can actually be a reliable reviver for them. Even when the Ranger isn’t playing a shout build.

I think that the biggest problem is that pets do not scale with end game content. Take for example high Lvl fracs which are designed for players with high end exotic/ascended gear.
However, our core ranger mechanic, the pet which does 30% or more of our damage and is basically a part of you does not scale with whatever gear you have. This basically means that we benefit much less from the gear and this IMO is a major balance issue. (Pets not have the AR stat from your ascended gear is an example of this)

You probably don’t remember me Robert but you were the one who solved my account issues once.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP.

I have to disagree. IMO it will be impossible to balance the ranger unless more of the dps is distributed to the ranger. we all ready rely on the pets for most our CC and our only blast finisher is from a pet. as it is right now the ranger is to dependent on the pets. there are to many situations that the pet is useless putting the ranger at a huge disadvantage. even when you are not in one of the following situations the ranger is at a slight disadvantage because of how easy it is to kite pets in a circle.

1. large WvW fights
2. tower/keep takes
3. tower/keep defense
4. fractals
5. fighting a thief, its just a free C&D.

other classes are not so dependent on their class mechanic and sure don’t lose 40% dps for being in said situation. few examples are.

Thief – take steal away from them and they would still be good.

Warrior – can do good dps without using adrenaline. in fact have traits that give bonus damage % and crit % for not using it, someone probably even has a build built around keeping it full as much as possible.

elle – well they really don’t have a class mechanic, it is basically their weapon swaps.

mesmer – not really sure about them, however have seen them do great in zergs. so i would guess that have some builds not to dependent on clones.

Swagg.9236:

Ranger is broken as it is. Making pets effective is going to take a LOT more than number games (which, unfortunately, has most often been the majority of what ANet has done with regards to balancing professions and skills). I’m just going to drop pic related here for consideration. All of the skill specifics aren’t really fixed ideas, I just think that there should be two modes for the Ranger as it is. If you really want to make the pet meaningful and effective on the field, you’ll need more than 1 F-skill (IT’S SERIOUSLY JUST ONE SKILL—IT’S EFFECTIVELY THE WARRIOR) to bring out a pet’s potential.

You would need an entire skill set to really maximize a pet’s presence. It’s seriously a second body for the Ranger. I can’t believe that no designer has taken advantage of that.

^^This is worth reading several times over. Also, see the chart Swagg attached. This sounds like a golden idea that not only makes pets more viable but also makes ranger play in general more interesting and varied while creating an option for players who want an archer rather than a beastmaster (just wouldn’t swap to beastmaster mode).

Kasama.8941:

@Robert

I was wondering if you’ve ever thought of adding “Search and Rescue” as a permanent pet skill, in the pet UI bar, instead of it being a utility skill? I think it would add a lot more value to the pet, especially in dungeons.

I see a lot of Ranger players sending their melee pet off to its death, in the hopes of dealing out some more damage, and then just use pet switch to do the same with the next pet, once the first one is dead. I think this is because damage in itself isn’t really considered a value, as you can already deal a lot of damage yourself as a Ranger, and the pet is only good for dealing damage if you aren’t using any shouts (F2 support skills really aren’t that powerful on their own). But if you gave the pet some more value, maybe more Ranger players would learn to take better care of their pet? I mean, if you always have “Search and Rescue” on the pet, it’s a much bigger sacrifice once you lose it. And it would also have the added bonus of your allies thinking more highly of the pet, because it can actually be a reliable reviver for them. Even when the Ranger isn’t playing a shout build.

As I’ve suggested before. F3 should be a selectable shout skill.

No one runs shouts on their build aside for making kittenz and gigglez vids. Now that guard is nerfed, doubly so.

Majik.8521:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP.

I have to disagree. IMO it will be impossible to balance the ranger unless more of the dps is distributed to the ranger. we all ready rely on the pets for most our CC and our only blast finisher is from a pet. as it is right now the ranger is to dependent on the pets. there are to many situations that the pet is useless putting the ranger at a huge disadvantage. even when you are not in one of the following situations the ranger is at a slight disadvantage because of how easy it is to kite pets in a circle.

1. large WvW fights
2. tower/keep takes
3. tower/keep defense
4. fractals
5. fighting a thief, its just a free C&D.

other classes are not so dependent on their class mechanic and sure don’t lose 40% dps for being in said situation. few examples are.

Thief – take steal away from them and they would still be good.

Warrior – can do good dps without using adrenaline. in fact have traits that give bonus damage % and crit % for not using it, someone probably even has a build built around keeping it full as much as possible.

elle – well they really don’t have a class mechanic, it is basically their weapon swaps.

mesmer – not really sure about them, however have seen them do great in zergs. so i would guess that have some builds not to dependent on clones.

Agreed. Many thieves only use steal as an extra shadowstep/teleport. Many warriors simply ignore the adrenal skills and get bonuses from having full bars all the time. Ele’s may not have a class mechanic quite like the other professions, but they get various buffs added when they swap attunements on top of having 20 weapon skills available. Mesmers can build lots of different ways, including having lots of clones up or having clones/illusions that cause effects when they’re killed.

There just seem to be far more options for any other profession out there right now. We can argue over whether or not the ranger can hold its own as a profession, but the evidence still points to a general “no” from the community. I have yet to see other professions singled out as undesired for dungeon runs the way the ranger has been (lots of posts on gw2lfg.com saying “no rangers”).

Still, my energy level remains high since we at least have a dev who’s willing to speak with us on issues here again

Majik.8521:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP.

I have to disagree. IMO it will be impossible to balance the ranger unless more of the dps is distributed to the ranger. we all ready rely on the pets for most our CC and our only blast finisher is from a pet. as it is right now the ranger is to dependent on the pets. there are to many situations that the pet is useless putting the ranger at a huge disadvantage. even when you are not in one of the following situations the ranger is at a slight disadvantage because of how easy it is to kite pets in a circle.

1. large WvW fights
2. tower/keep takes
3. tower/keep defense
4. fractals
5. fighting a thief, its just a free C&D.

other classes are not so dependent on their class mechanic and sure don’t lose 40% dps for being in said situation. few examples are.

Thief – take steal away from them and they would still be good.

Warrior – can do good dps without using adrenaline. in fact have traits that give bonus damage % and crit % for not using it, someone probably even has a build built around keeping it full as much as possible.

elle – well they really don’t have a class mechanic, it is basically their weapon swaps.

mesmer – not really sure about them, however have seen them do great in zergs. so i would guess that have some builds not to dependent on clones.

Never mind that they don’t have to worry about these abilities being shut down because their little sidekick NPC died.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Thanks Robert for being noticeably invested in this with us. It seems like some times on the forums that us players are seemingly left out of the conversations and only get second hand knowledge after a decision has already been made. I feel that you exemplify how good communication should be done — with laying ideas out there and not being afraid to have a chat.

It’s often times easy to get caught up in one’s own thoughts and solutions to a problem, and never let them see the light of day on the forums; and by that point one may be so invested in the idea that, in their view, it’s the only way to go.

Also, be as doggity as you can in those meeting for me! I’ll be here cheering you on. =]

I’ve been thinking about damage reduction on pets and the problems with them face tanking bosses and trying to think of a compromise with wanting pets to be more durable so they don’t get OHKO constantly, but at the same time they don’t just face tank bosses.

What about giving pets considerable damage reduction while moving? Say 80-90% damage reduction. I don’t think pets face tanking bosses are going to be moving all the time so they wouldn’t be able to face tank, but pets commanded to return their master (or simply following him as he dodges through AoEs like during the final boss of the snowblind fractal) would receive the desired protection from the incoming attack. This would reward ranger for commanding their pets to return without having to worry about them getting curb stomped regardless of what you do because the pet doesn’t leave melee range of a boss fast enough or directly enough to avoid the incoming attack (nor do they enjoy dodge evasion).

On top of this I still think some more durability during boss encounters (or even hard hitting mobs like Knights in TA) could be desired. Something like Bark Skin or even the elementalist skill Arcane Shield or the ranger trait (for rangers, not their pets) Nature’s Protection. Gaining protection when you take more than 10% damage from a hit probably wouldn’t be enough because pets die too quickly from one or two hits and even a 33% damage reduction wouldn’t be enough.

What about a trait from 20 points in beast master which triggers if an attack would deal more than 20% damage to the pet. The hit that triggers it only does 10% damage (the rest is negated) and for the next 10 seconds the pet has protection. Give it a 20 second cooldown so at maximum it can only have a 50% up time. Or the trait could give pets an effect like a hardened coat, where it blocks the first attack to do more than 20% damage and then gives the pet a shield that lasts for 10 seconds which blocks the next five attacks. Make the trait have a 30 second cooldown so it only has a 33% up time to prevent this from face tanking. This gives the ranger some leeway with the pet to avoid it being downed as soon as it is target, it also gives the ranger time to command the pet to respond or gives the pet time to finish executing an attack before it starts taking massive damage. Alternatively, give Beast Mastery a 20 point trait (current 20 point traits leave much to desired and pigeon hole rangers into species) which gives the pet bark skin (maybe trigger it at 50% health instead of 25%) or alter the way the shout “Guard” works so that it has a similair effect to the above proposals. The current use is probably more of sPvP skill rather than anywhere else and it should probably be a basic ranger command, not a utility skill.

The idea would be to give pets powerful damage reduction from a few different sources, but none of them support face tanking bosses for the party. Damage reduction while moving helps pets avoid being killed while running to their target or when commanded to return but they are too slow/stupid to get out of it. It alleviates the pressure put into rangers when the AI pathing and lack of dodge is inadequate to keep the pet alive, but it doesn’t allow the pet to perform the roll of a tank.

Giving the pet some kind of trait or ability to absorb more attacks, but without it having 100% up time. A combination of passive tools (such as traits which trigger when the situation arises) and the use of active tools (conditional damage reduction when moving – pets only move when the ranger does or when commanded to, changes to skills like Guard that rangers choose when to use) minimise the need for micromanagement, reinforce the ability of the pet to perform it’s role and help to avoid creating a situations where pets are able to face tank mobs with 100% up time.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Ision.3207:

Robert, let tell you what I think adding a pet dodge mechanic will resolve for 90% of your Ranger player base: nothing.

Like Gutbuster has stated, “Often it’s difficult enough to know exactly when you need to dodge in order to avoid some damage, with a pet dodge you’d be required to not only keep track of your own position but also your pet’s exact position which also trying to see your pet amongst all the spell graphics surrounding bosses getting nuked, seeing red circles on the floor which may be behind the boss since that’s where your pet is, camera angles etc the list goes on a bit. In addition you’d also have to hit your own dodge key as well as an additional F key or any other key bind you have.”

I agree with him whole heartedly.

Yes, without a doubt there will be a small fraction of Ranger players that will benefit from the mechanic: the “Pro” player, if you will. These people have ridiculously quick reflexes, as well a superb RIGs and a mouse with dozens of key binds they have no problem dealing with. I’m NOT talking bad about these players; hey, god bless ’em, they are the exceptions to the general rule, and they make the most of it. These tend to be your best of the best players and are often found in sPvP/tPvP.

But for the non-PRO player, adding a dodge mechanic for the pet will be an utter waste of time in dealing with the problem of Pets dying from AOE too much in dungeons —- the difference will be insignicant for the typical Ranger player who is under heavy duress from swarms of mobs, surrounded with heavy particle effects and trying to keep himself alive and contributing to the party.

Look, I’m not talking about that bottom 5 to 10% either, the folks that really have very poor reflexes and positional awareness, and who really can’t cope with the basic pace of this game. At least not in a difficult dungeon setting anyway. No, I’m referring to that big fat mass of players in the middle: also known as: the “majority” – the “average” – the “typical”.

For this group, many of the ideas being offered here will only result in the outcome stated by Shiren, “So micromanaging and resource management are the game-play being pushed by that kind of design. A lot of us play the class for the AI companion, not a micromanaged companion. Micromanaging, while increasing the skill cap (in a certain way), isn’t going to solve the problem for a lot of rangers, and for many players it takes the class in a direction they don’t want to go in.”

In essence many of the changes being proposed would transform the Ranger into a class that does not resemble the one that many people were looking for when they rolled it. Please keep this in mind as you consider the many OTHER options that exist to address pet mechanics and survivability.

Thank you.

We’re aware of that. Again part of what that list is, is a launching point for conversation and dialogue. Part of our jobs as designers is to take feedback and try to figure out the core of what is being said, and develop plans around that. I’m not saying those things are going to happen – I wish I could, but I can’t. It’s just something I can turn into a bullet point for us to address and talk about. These things take time, but I promise you I will be bringing these things up.

EDIT:
Oh, and in regards to the Jade Maw targeting pets, I made the conscious decision to allow it to target non-players. I have the ability to change that, but I prefer not to on the grounds that there is some gameplay there. My pet has made the ultimate sacrifice quite a few times while we res’d a down party members, providing groups with a much needed window to help others up and recover. I know it can be a bit frustrating if everything is going great and you’re not having any problems, but I’d much rather the pet provide a moment of relief for those struggling. I am open to debate on the subject, but that is for threads over in the dungeon forum, not here

DOUBLE EDIT:
Jade Maw should not target downed pets. We have a bug on it already and are aware of it.

Robert,

Is there any chance you could just revert the Ranger back to the BWE2 version. Not sure why it was gutted from that version but it was very playable. If the concern was that it was OP well I can assure you it wasn’t as good as current Guardian/Thief/Ele.

kiwituatara.6053:

Hi Robert!
I think you may have missed my post on this thread. So I’ll add a picture this time.

Can we please have a pet UI upgrade? A numerical health bar (I just pasted my HP on to the pets HP bar, I know thats not the real number. And all the pets boons/condition/etc show up above the pet UI so we don’t have to click on our pets?

Thank you!

PS. And yes. Please fix Jade Maw so it will stop targeting pets. If that was intentional, then please fix Jade Maw so it will stop targeting dead pets. Thank you!

Please, please see this comment. It’s so bad that we can’t see pets’ buffs when it’s such a big part of our class.

Hmm… “fractals” are really a small aspect to GW2… I for example tried them… hated them and never touched them again…

And seeing that designers acknowledging our problems over fractals and only in pet design gives me the idea that “rangers” has no hope for near future to be viable in WvWvW or sPvP (except 2 builds which are struggling against able players and they are not viable in WvWvW anyways)…

Tell you what… give the %40 effectiveness of other classes to an unfinished (trying to keep it civilized here) AI and watch their forums flame on…

if you are persistent that at least 40% of my performance comes from a pet, that pet shoul NEVER die, for me to have my full potencial all times at my disposal as ALL the other classes have.

But all in all… i see how the ranger is being monitored and getting fixes… this was probably an eye opener for most of us…

regards…

I still don’t get the “reducing AoE damage on pets would allow 2 rangers to duo a dungeon” argument, to be honest.

Warriors can already solo a lot of dungeons and even Lupicus, while putting in not even half the effort a ranger would have to to get Lupicus even to half HP.

Why are Warriors allowed to solo content but Rangers aren’t allowed to duo it? What kind of stupid decision is that?
I’m also strongly doubting Robert’s dungeon experiences by now.

Yes, you can clear a dungeon with a party with 3 rangers. But can you do it within any reasonable amount of time? Hell no. You’d take 3 times as long and require a LOT more effort than if you were to replace those rangers with warriors or guardians. That’s the reason why I rolled a guardian after 3-4 months of playing a ranger. Why put in twice the effort to get half the reward?

kiwituatara.6053:

Hi Robert!
I think you may have missed my post on this thread. So I’ll add a picture this time.

Can we please have a pet UI upgrade? A numerical health bar (I just pasted my HP on to the pets HP bar, I know thats not the real number. And all the pets boons/condition/etc show up above the pet UI so we don’t have to click on our pets?

Thank you!

Let me just quote you because this is exactly what we need as well. It even looks good.

It’s also very true that all other classes have a choice to use their class mechanic or not and often only passively helps them. Ok a pet also passively helps us, sort of, but it can die and be disabled and be avoided, etc and we suffer a DPS loss simply for having it. I’m definitely leaning towards giving DPS back to the ranger and taking it away from the pet. I love the idea of a beastmaster that has a really buffed up pet that does most of the damage, but that should probably be made a trait. A trait that reduces the Ranger damage by 30% and gives the pet 40% more damage, or something along those lines. Maybe merge “Speed Training” with this, so it’s still accessible on a low level.

I’m very happy with Robert being actively involved, but I’m also very happy with the rest of the community making great posts.

Robert Hrouda, dev of the year for communicating so much.
I am a novice ranger (created after an ele), so I will give some beginner’s input.
UI improvement : it would be good to see a pet health bar (see kiwituatara.6053 post).
F1 : attack/return to me is a great idea. Return should be done via a leap or by the pet having a 2s swiftness.
F2 : dodge/distorsion/aegis. I prefer the distorsion on the condition pets do not attack during this time. Or then it would be overpowered. Distorsion gives me the ability to recall my pet out of an AOE without him taking damage or to leave him in place to avoid damage from a single hit attack. Having this ability on a 7-8s cd could be great.
F3 : pet ability.
F4 : switch pet.

I know this thread is about the pets not about the skills. But i do not get the point of using the shouts ? Either the description lacks information or they are useless.
e.g : Guard, Your pet will aggressively protect the target area. Why would I use this ? If I place my pet at one point and me at another am I not sacrificing half of my dps and survivability, what happens if my pets gets hit and I have to swap ? This skill just lacks any benefit, perhaps pet and master could gain aegis and protection for a few seconds.

As much as i disagree with getting rid of the pet altogether or making it so we gain a buff when pet is stowed as other people have mentioned, i do agree that we need a perma stow option just for those times where we really do not want the pet coming out such as getting past enemies undetected.

Also, as many other people have stated a dodge button will not work for the pet. There is too much going on in the game to worry about dodging for both yourself and your pet. Finally pets need to be able to attack on the move, i notice that when my wolf does the leap knockdown if the target is moving, by the time my wolf has “prepared” itself the target is out of range. As we know this problem is common with a lot of pet F2 abilities (looking at you Drakes).

Hi guys, long time lurker and fan of the game here. I just wanted to offer my 2c .
I am a big fan of elegant and simple solutions , and if the developers decided that the pet is here to stay, then it is something that should form the basis of the discussion , agreed?

What i think could be done , to not make things too insane would be this :

- limit the damage pets take from a SINGLE attack to 10-20% of their hitpoints . A series of attacks or conditions could still take them down quickly, but you would still have time to swap them out

- give the pets shared agony resistance with the ranger

- fix the signets and lower the longer cooldown ones to something more reasonable .

- make the f2 ability cast instantly , and in case of melee range ones , just make it so that the pet leaps to the target super fast and casts it . This is to improve responsiveness .

- ofc fix various bugs, but this should go without saying

Choko

When “Game Testers” playing with Godmode, they won’t see how seriously the things are unbalanced…

Robert, our Ranger profession has the least amount of condition removal and the ones that we have is mostly harmful to our pets,some requires full 30 trait points to activate ,the signet is unreliable if pet is far from ranger,the bear is also unreliable if ur fighting from a range(which a ranger mostly do) since the bear needs to run near the target b4 he will do the “shake it off”.

Can we have a rework for the signet of renewal,more trait synergy for cond removal like ele has, so that our pets don’t get punished for cond removal since we need our pets alive.

Here is my idea for new elite skill or utility to help compensate ranger’s lack of cond removal.But I don’t like unbalanced skills,so i add in a drawback

Signet of Nature’s Equilibrium-
Passive mode- Reduces all condition duration inflicted and boon duration applied on ranger and pet to 3 seconds maximum.
Active mode- Remove all conditions and boons from Ranger and pet,gain immunity from conditions and boons for 10 seconds. Cooldown 60 seconds.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

Robert, our Ranger profession has the least amount of condition removal and the ones that we have is mostly harmful to our pets,some requires full 30 trait points to activate ,the signet is unreliable if pet is far from ranger,the bear is also unreliable if ur fighting from a range(which a ranger mostly do) since the bear needs to run near the target b4 he will do the “shake it off”.

Can we have a rework for the signet of renewal,more trait synergy for cond removal like ele has, so that our pets don’t get punished for cond removal since we need our pets alive.

Here is my idea for new elite skill or utility to help compensate ranger’s lack of cond removal.But I don’t like unbalanced skills,so i add in a drawback

Signet of Nature’s Equilibrium-
Passive mode- Reduces all condition duration inflicted and boon duration applied on ranger and pet to 3 seconds maximum.
Active mode- Remove all conditions and boons from Ranger and pet,gain immunity from conditions and boons for 10 seconds. Cooldown 60 seconds.

While I believe that particular suggestion would be very overpowered, we can all agree that the people responsible for creating the Signet of Renewal must have been smoking something at the time. Not only will it cause you to basically command your pet to suffer and die when activated, but when using it with Signet of the Beastmaster you’ll both suffer and die.

And there comes my Guardian, shouting ‘Save Yourselves’ and turns into a God for 10s every 60s (who has tons of additional means to rid himself from the conditions he just took from others) >_<

So I personally believe that Signet of Renewal is indeed in DIRE need of a change (this goes for some of the other signets too btw like Signet of the Hunt). At present time I see it as Signet of the Moron (as you have to be one to use it).

My suggestion would be:

Signet Passive: Cures a condition on you and your pet every 10s
Signet Active: Your pet pulls conditions from nearby allies to itself and converts them into boons.

THE problem: We can not micro manage our own characters AND micro manage pets with a host of Fsomething commands. I only have 2 hands, trying to control movement with one, fighting with my toon with one, sorta leaves fighting with a third out of the question, unless we develop foot controls.

NargofWoV.4267:

THE problem: We can not micro manage our own characters AND micro manage pets with a host of Fsomething commands. I only have 2 hands, trying to control movement with one, fighting with my toon with one, sorta leaves fighting with a third out of the question, unless we develop foot controls.

not aslong as you will get banned for using macros that is…. if they were to turn around and allow “passive macros” (macros derived from hardware such as high-end gaming keyboards and mouses) and add some kinda “hack shield” client side to prevent 3rd party programs to run macros for you.

In lieu of a full overhaul to turn Rangers into literally a single character split into two, I’m in favor of pets having an endurance bar themselves and having a defensive or “death save” skill that uses up endurance to activate it. It could be based on pet family, with some just evading during that time (like the flying pets), teleporting nearby (towards the Ranger hopefully, like the cat pets), or just temporarily ignoring 80-90% of the damage/conditions (say…bear and boar?). They’d be able to activate it about the same amount as we can dodge, endurance refresh pegged with ranger’s current rate, and is triggered when they will take damage more than a certain percentage of their health within a short time (maybe toss in a self heal when it triggers too).

Of course that’s in addition to my other pet wants:
1. health values displayed

2. boons/conditions/effects displayed

3. Using ranger’s stats if they’re higher. Basically all those stats on the Hero panel? If the pet’s stat is lower, it should use mine instead. AR’s on there, so that should cover that.

4. MUCH stronger visual/audio feedback when commands are given (to help avoid repeatedly slamming the button out of frustration). I’m talking lights, a small gust of wind, sound of lightning or a bullet firing…just anything more than a soft whistle I can barely hear.

If telling the pet to attack caused a shout (even if only heard by me), a small gust of wind, and a response noise from the pet…I’d never feel like something was wrong even if it was.

5. Giving a pet command, including F2, should immediately interrupt whatever the pet is doing and the pet should start moving and doing it without any delay. There shouldn’t be any delay between the command and action starting. It feels a lot of the time like I’m giving the pet a suggestion rather than a command. No queuing the command…just immediately act on it.

6. Focus weapon skills. In any weapon bar, one of the weapon skills should also force a pet command (even if a new toggled mode needs to be added that allows the pet to respond to this). Call it a focus attack or something, but it’d make me feel like the pet was working with me far more if we worked together to perform an attack rather than just do our own things. I’m not talking about just giving them a buff, I’m talking things like Swoop being able to have the pet leap at the mob at the same time (pet interrupts their action, gains swiftness, and immediately leaps at the mob too). Put it on offhands and 2handers if necessary, and only allowed when the pet is in aggressive stance or some new stance.

Tell me, who doesn’t wish they could perform an X-Strike with their pet? Hell, give the pet a stance and make multiple weapon skills do this instead of just passively buffing your pet.

7. On passive the pet should follow directly behind me, and take the direct distance between me and them. No wandering, no aggro bubble, none of this behavior where they want to stand somewhere in the surrounding 30 feet or something, they should be practically trying to nuzzle me at all times. In addition, maybe they could absorb an attack once every 10 seconds or something.

8. If attack becomes a toggle, there should be some option at allows me to choose whether I want it to toggle regardless of target (choosing a new target still does the “back off”), or toggle only if I’m on the same target (as in switching to a new target will issue another attack command instead of a “back off”, but having the same target will issue a “back off”).

That’s just me, though.

I thought I’d add a suggestion (sorry of it was already mentioned, I was overwhelmed by all the text in this thread so jumped ahead a bit). So some people want to stow pets permanently, which is a no go, and someone even suggested merging with your pets to gain abilities. I was thinking about Rampage as one. From the buffs it seems one will either be busy getting somewhere safe, or dealing damage with the crit chance buff on when using this skill. If you want your pet to maw someone in the ground, you’ll use shouhts/signets anyway. How about this, you would merge with your pet, and get swiftness and stability as before, but you would get the 3rd boon based on pet category. Not a perma stow, but still 20+ secs. Stats OR boons could be sg along the way of bears giving vitality/chance to get protection, felines precision/chance to get vigor, spiders con.damage/chance to apply poison, caninces toughness/chance to knockdown or interrupt, drakes vitality/regen… Probably needs some programming, but elementalists have something familiar, with boons depending on attunement when using certain skills.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Mr. Hrouda.

Most of my personal concerns have been covered already, but I would like to add something. You say can’t move numbers because the ranger breaks content, yet There are videos of warriors and guardians doing solo arah. Isn’t that breaking game content? If they can kill by themselves a dungeon boss, can’t they do the same with pretty much any open world content? Why are rangers being nerfed on a basis that doesn’t seem to apply to other classes?
I know you are not in the team that takes this decisions, and probably can’t really answer those questions, but a bit of insight to the process would be nice, because from where I am standing it seems rather arbitrary.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

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

This. I dunno why you would want to do it any other way. Pet should share AR with owner. However, they shouldn’t get the orange skull at the Maw unless you make it so that the ranger can deflect the damage by picking up a crystal himself.

Hoyvin.3241:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

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

This. I dunno why you would want to do it any other way. Pet should share AR with owner. However, they shouldn’t get the orange skull at the Maw unless you make it so that the ranger can deflect the damage by picking up a crystal himself.

It is rather frustrating that it can fire at your pet more often than one every 20 seconds and that once one pet is down you have to hope it doesn’t target the other one for a minute and there is nothing you can do about it except run with a dead pet for X amount of time.

Vahkris.6847:

Of course that’s in addition to my other pet wants:
1. health values displayed

2. boons/conditions/effects displayed

This.

I’ve been reading everything here, and this thread is full of great ideas. First, thumbs up for displaying the pet health and boons/conditions, and for Aveneo’s suggestion for SoR.

The way I understand it, pets have the most problems in dungeons and WvW, but care needs to be taken not to make them (even more) overpowered in PvE. The big problem I see in dungeons is very powerful attacks that players are expected to avoid. The big problems I see in WvW are a mix of AOEs, the very high mobility of players, and in some cases the pet aiding the enemy (C&D).

If we are to be the “mini-me” class, then I want my pet to act like mini-me.

In PvE and dungeons, my pets don’t have much problem landing their attacks, but in WvW this is a serious issue. Unless I’m wrong, most melee attacks in the game can either be used while moving, or jump quickly toward the target. Giving melee pets the ability to attack on the move, and ranged pets faster projectiles could help solve this. I realise there is a rather severe animation blending problem, as bipedal players can play a running animation while swinging their weapon, but blending a cat running with a reared-up slash would need some serious work. I’m sure most of us would rather have stupid looking animations for a while than useless pets. Also, I think melee pets should at least try to attack from behind, to help avoid cleaves and PBAOEs.

As for powerful attacks and AOEs, it’s very true that we can’t always see what sort of danger our pet may be in, especially at range. Giving pets their own endurance bar, affected by vigor, and some sort of on-hit high-damage mitigation could help fix this. I still think pets should at least have swiftness while recalling, and possibly a 1 second aegis or distortion, even if this comes out of their endurance bar. If pet AI cannot predict when it will be hit by a large attack in order to activate its protection, then I’d suggest that it work somewhat like Nature’s Protection (mitigation on powerful hit). That is, if a pet would take more than maybe 20% damage in a single strike, use half of its endurance bar to mitigate it in some way, either via an instant-breaking aegis, distortion, or something similar. (Having the percentage low enough to sometimes trigger on C&D would be nice, too ) This could even be pet-species specific, perhaps aegis for bears, distortion and stealth for cats, evade for dogs, tunnel for spiders and devourers, you get the idea.

Neither of these would be particularly strong in PvE, as mobs don’t move as much as players so their attacks already hit often, and there would usually not be enough spike damage to trigger a pet’s mitigation (excepting champion encounters, where this would be a huge help). Condition removal on pets, healing them, and swapping would remain important. An enemy focusing on a pet, just as focusing on a player, should still put them in danger.

Prysin.8542:

NargofWoV.4267:

THE problem: We can not micro manage our own characters AND micro manage pets with a host of Fsomething commands. I only have 2 hands, trying to control movement with one, fighting with my toon with one, sorta leaves fighting with a third out of the question, unless we develop foot controls.

not aslong as you will get banned for using macros that is…. if they were to turn around and allow “passive macros” (macros derived from hardware such as high-end gaming keyboards and mouses) and add some kinda “hack shield” client side to prevent 3rd party programs to run macros for you.

My point has nothing to do with Macro’s. Micro managing is all the clicking we have to do now, adding 4 more buttons, I now have to manage, while managing my existing 4 buttons, along with movement keys, would drive us all insane, particularly if we have to move, control a pet and fight all at the same time. I don’t have enough hands, this shouldn’t be the solution (Where we are now having each pet fighting skill/dodge and pet movement skill on a command basis rather than an AI).

Have been thinking about various suggestions as well as how I’ve been finding pets and have came up with the following thoughts:

• Pet Dodge – While it sounds good at first, giving pets the same mechanic to avoid the big hits as players, in practice it wouldn’t have the intended effect due to needing to pay attention to positioning of the pet, every possible ability going their way, the dodge button and resource pets would use, causing it to be very difficult for the majority to do anything with.

• Passive pet boosts – These work in other games, giving pets bonus damage resistance and such but in this game which is designed around fast paced reflexive action it would just make the pets OP with the amount of damage they do and the fact they are AI controlled.

• Aegis/Protection for pets – These would work, but have the issue of being tied to your own dodging (Thus meaning your survival goes down to keep your pet up, no other class has to put themselves at similar risk to keep 40-50% of their damage)

• Alternatives solutions – Heavy reduction in the cooldown of pet-swaps (Especially the dead pet swaps) or ways to heal pets (Pet heal on evade/your crits/applying boons to allies etc) to bring them to life again (Or keep them from dying in the first place).
  – Rebalance of the pet/player DPS ratio to make the pet not as required (Possible petless builds?) or maybe even make the number rebalancing less OP

• Non directly pet survivability related thoughts
  – More synergy between pet and master, boons from various attacks, Thief style “Dual strike” abilities (Changing with pets/weapon sets)
  - Viable choice between single and multi-pet usage, allow single pets to be utilized through “Master’s Bond” type abilities at the expense of “On swap” abilities
  – Equipment for pets (Armour and such) either as cosmetic only (Gem store) or as a stat boost that can help mould pets to the players playstyle (Say if someone wanted to get some extra Vitality/Toughness onto their pet for dungeons or some Power/Precision in PvP for making the most out of what time their pets are on targets)
  - More control over pet skills, allow players to toggle auto-attacks of pet abilities or use them on demand. Also increase the fluidity of using them by making them instant-cast and usable whilst the pet is moving (Possibly will need to add leaps to some abilities so animations wouldn’t be broken with them)

Hoyvin.3241:

Vahkris.6847:

Of course that’s in addition to my other pet wants:
1. health values displayed

2. boons/conditions/effects displayed

This.

I will add my “This” to this as well.

Are we allowed to know when this next discussion is, Robert? ;-)

Any of these in particular that are your favorites? ;-)

Give all pets Defy Pain.

Defy Pain is the Bear Family’s signature skill. At a certain health percentage (sub 40%, I think), Bears will automatically activate their Defy Pain skill which gives them invincibility frames. And frankly, it’s shocking how well that very simple behavior generally pans out most of the time. For anything that’s not a straight one-shot, it gives you enough time to realize something bad is going down and enough time to get your pet out of there. Maybe alter the duration a bit so it’s more sensible in respect to player reaction time, play with the percentage it activates, and give us a more obvious visual/sound cue when the pet is activating it; and it’s essentially a second chance mechanic and pet health warning system for the non-micromanagement folks.

Bots and Boss-Killing-Duos can choose to take Bears now. So, it’s not really adding anything to Pet AI survivability that isn’t fundamentally already there. It would just be fleshing out a good pet survivability skill to be an entire facet of our mechanic ,and proliferating it across more playstyles/builds/ approaches.

This can be either a stand-alone suggestion, in conjunction with an F3 dodge mechanic so that there is macromanagement and micromanagment ‘dodges’, or an addendum to my previous suggestion. (As a behavior that occurs automatically in the general Macromanagement mode, that becomes suspended and executed manually with’ 3 – Pet Dodge ’when you have the Micromanagement Bundle equipped.)

Between your idea and improved AI for pets, Vox, Rangers could avoid their pets being insta-gibbed (assuming the Defy Pain did actually prevent going 100% to 0%) as it would allow the Ranger to see their pet’s health drop to almost dead and the icon for Defy Pain pop for 2-3 seconds. That would let them know that they have 2-3 seconds to swap their pet or tell it to get it’s butt back to them or it’s going to likely die very soon.

NargofWoV.4267:

Prysin.8542:

NargofWoV.4267:

THE problem: We can not micro manage our own characters AND micro manage pets with a host of Fsomething commands. I only have 2 hands, trying to control movement with one, fighting with my toon with one, sorta leaves fighting with a third out of the question, unless we develop foot controls.

not aslong as you will get banned for using macros that is…. if they were to turn around and allow “passive macros” (macros derived from hardware such as high-end gaming keyboards and mouses) and add some kinda “hack shield” client side to prevent 3rd party programs to run macros for you.

My point has nothing to do with Macro’s. Micro managing is all the clicking we have to do now, adding 4 more buttons, I now have to manage, while managing my existing 4 buttons, along with movement keys, would drive us all insane, particularly if we have to move, control a pet and fight all at the same time. I don’t have enough hands, this shouldn’t be the solution (Where we are now having each pet fighting skill/dodge and pet movement skill on a command basis rather than an AI).

my point is, that IF we were allowed to use such features, we could easily micromanage our pets, weapon swap combos, and other things…. sadly, we aint… i kinda dislike the “no macro” laws, since most mid to high-end gaming keyboards and mices have atleast a few built in.

Honestly, Prysin, I don’t think things shouldn’t be designed around everyone having high-end gaming keyboards. That excludes people from being able to enjoy it even if they want to as not everyone can afford or wants to learn how to use a Razer Naga (just an example since it’s what I use).

TBH, I think A-Net seriously needs to take a hard look at damage to pets that’s either unavoidable or very difficult to avoid (i.e. agony and some AoE) The big rings of fire on the colossus fractal for instance. Sure, you could stand off to the side and put your pet on passive, but since a very significant portion of the ranger’s damage is supposed to be from the pet, how fair is this?

I think we all, or at least most of us, understand that you have to manage your pet effectively, but you shouldn’t have to micromanage him just to keep him in the fight.

Sebrent.3625:

Honestly, Prysin, I don’t think things shouldn’t be designed around everyone having high-end gaming keyboards. That excludes people from being able to enjoy it even if they want to as not everyone can afford or wants to learn how to use a Razer Naga (just an example since it’s what I use).

i got a Roccat Isku and RAT 7 MMO mice…. yes they are really expensive, but my old 20€ Logitech mice and keyboard had 4 programmable macros built it…. contrary to my current setup which costs in excess of 200€

you dont need high end to get two or three. I do understand that programs who create macros should be banned, because their simply bots and can be programmed from start to end, much easier then the keyboards and mice’s can….

however, we are getting off topic…

Between your idea and improved AI for pets, Vox, Rangers could avoid their pets being insta-gibbed (assuming the Defy Pain did actually prevent going 100% to 0%) as it would allow the Ranger to see their pet’s health drop to almost dead and the icon for Defy Pain pop for 2-3 seconds. That would let them know that they have 2-3 seconds to swap their pet or tell it to get it’s butt back to them or it’s going to likely die very soon.

That’s also an alternative worth considering.

As far as I can tell Defy Pain doesn’t work on one-hit KOs. And what I was intending was something that prettymuch just needed to weather the storm of something multi-hit long enough to successfully communicate a “Master, help me!”, and give you enough time to execute whatever helping entails (F3 dodges, Super speedy Return, Swapping, etc).

It could work for one-shots, I think, it’s just the message would change a bit. Into “Master, I was able to scrape by this time, but pay attention to this in the future because it hurts like hell!”. Kind of less of a warning system, more of a learning tool in that case. But I kind of wonder if this would make it kind of imbalanced?

If 2-3 seconds seems like a reasonable enough reaction time for non-micromanagement people, I am all for that.

A sound cue might be better than an icon, especially because I’m suggesting this specifically for helping people who aren’t multitasking wizards and need something automatic happening to help a pet survive. A sound cue can be picked up no matter where your attention and eyeballs are. Also, being that these are all mobs, they do have ‘hurt’ sounds for all of them. Just remove the existing sound cues (which are kind of random), and move the hurt sounds over to Defy pain.

My opinion is that the pet’s share of overall damage should be greatly reduced, and the ranger’s increased. If the current split is 70% ranger damage to 30% pet damage, that ratio should mover closer to 85/15.

Reducing rangers’ reliance on pet damage will soften the effects on balance that are caused by their pets’ lack of survivability, attack uptime (such as from keep walls), and stat scaling.

I’m not for reducing the pet’s contribution to the Ranger’s damage. I go condition damage, my pet tears face with direct damage and it works really well. They can apply pressure while I’m tanky or being defensive. It works really well … when it works. That’s the issue … when it works.

Pets hitting moving targets in PvP is an issue. Pets staying alive in dungeons is an issue.
Pets staying alive (reasonably) in large fights is an issue.

If you solve these issues, we’re pretty golden … at least silver ;-)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sebrent.3625:

Are we allowed to know when this next discussion is, Robert? ;-)

Today! We have them multiple times per week. I may not bring up all of the issues from the list since there are a bunch of other class things to discuss, but I’ll seed the list details multiple times throughout the coming meetings to keep it on everyone’s mind, and spend some time this weekend coming up with proposals and such so I can better guide the conversation.

I alpha and beta test 3d software for major companies, and when working in alpha sometimes in order to get a feature or adjustment to an existing feature I really have to sit down with the devs and be like look this doesn’t work because of this and this, then offer a solution on how to make it work and how other render engines have it implemented or different modeling solutions for poly tools etc etc. So I know its not as simple as here’s my list fix this stuff now please.

Thanks for taking the effort and doing what you gotta do it is much appreciated trust me!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial

I, for one, would love a useless and vestigial pet. Then again, I am a fan of the GW1 ranger, despite its flaws. Those of us who like wilderness oriented skirmishers but don’t like pets got screwed. When Anet revealed the ranger and mandatory pets, the justification was it would allow Anet to make GW2 rangers the premier MMO pet class. I think even the die-hard pet supporters would have to chuckle a bit at that original goal, given the current state of things.

Even take Robert’s repeated examples – he only uses spider and drake. Yeah, great for the small number who thematically like those pets. I don’t, and I suspect a lot of other rangers don’t want to be forced to use only certian effective pets.

Fiddling with the F1-4 skills will not turn rangers into anything close to resembling a “premier” pet class. A much deeper and meaningful rework of the pets needs to occur, even though that would take more time and effort.

Imo, GW2 pets need to be more like GW1 heroes. They need customization, so players can choose the pet they want and can adapt them to situations (ie meaningful trade-offs between damage, survival, utility, etc) to get around that pets too powerful for PvE or too weak for Dungeons, etc.

A configurable pet skill bar should:
* have just a few species specific skills (just for a bit of flavor)
* a larger pool of cross species skills so you can adapt any pet for the various situations (open world, WvW, Dungeons)
* roll the pet shouts into this bar. Its a bit silly that one of the big complaints about GW1 pets was you needed to devote skill slots to their abilites. Yet, the supposedly improved GW2 pets have the same issue – to get much more utility out of them, you need to waste skill slots.
* maybe have more animal spirit pets – ones you can load up with utility and support, for those who don’t really care for pets
* (very long term) eventually spirits could be rolled into this system, since they are in need of love as well. They could have a level of uniqueness with a lot of the current spirit powers converted to spirit pet specific skills.

Also, another long term thing, would be a pet behavior thing in pet management. Creating player scripts for pet behavior is probably beyond most players and too much effort on Anet’s part – but a set of behavior check box things (like heal at 33% of health, always return if in more than 1 red circle, etc).

Yeah, I know, sounds like a lot of stuff, both for ranger players and the devs. But honestly, the difference between GW1 and GW2 pets is basically pet swap and the F2 skill. Not much in return for making pets mandatory.

I think Anet is amongst the best MMO dev teams, but they’re going to have to pony up a lot more time and their skill to really make rangers a “premier” pet class, which is what was promised for making pets mandatory. Otherwise, just remove pets as a lost cause.

PS – Robert, could you ask whoever deals with pet stats to see if the white raven (HoM) and regular raven have the same stats. Its often reported the white has less vit with no corresponding increase elsewhere.