Guild Wars 2

Zenith.7301:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I actually pretty much agree with all of this. Even the solution is solid. If pets holding aggro is an issue, make them stop. Simple but good.

It would be nice if there was an option to make the pet mimic the ranger. Dodge when I dodge, move when I move, attack when I do, etc. So when I am in melee I know we are both avoiding damage, and when I move to range I change pets like I would weapons.

Thread reviving should be insta ban

Trying to get it a bit on topic; pets are pretty kitten insane with beastmaster traits maxed. I think my pet was getting about 400 health a tick in the molten foundry dungeon. Beyond the ‘oneshot’ attacks which are telegraphed you’re laughing; and the oneshots are pretty easy to see coming.
If you’re not sure they’re coming then just get a ranged pet so you don’t have to worry about them getting killed in a scrum.

Without beastmastery, still take the signet of the wild and stick with ranged pets. Devourers are the toughest, have a knockback and a ‘digback and get away’ and are tougher than spiders, so they’re ideal.
You might take a moa bird but have it set to passive, because it will just die if you let it get in.

You can’t have your pet dodge out of instant kill attacks when you’re not one of those rangers that like to sit on a bow and do deficient DPS compared to better melee damage.

You can walk inside the Molten Berserker to not get hit by the sequences of shockwaves, but your pet won’t get in so if it’s a jaguar particularly it dies.

And any pet that’s not a jaguar does horrible DPS by comparison. It’s nowhere close.

What’s your build? Last run I had a raven out and it never died.

Loki.4871:

What’s your build? Last run I had a raven out and it never died.

30 BM just like some people have been saying. Even with 25 MB stacks. health on pet crits from skirmishing. natural regen from 30 BM major.

If you’re meleeing, your pet is bound to die because you can’t call it away from the aoe that you yourself are able to dodge through while it has to walk through or tank the damage.

I know the pet is very easy to manage from range — I’ve done it and yes you can call it back with some success a lot of the time. It just doesn’t work when you try to maximize your damage output by meleeing like everybody else does.

The thing is I’m using a longsword+dagger and axe+axe combo, so my pets are always in melee. Do you have the trait that grants protection on rolls? It’s very useful for the pet, as is natural healing (of course) along with signet of the wild. I also swap pets like a maniac to avoid them dying when I can.

However, in regards to the boss I suspect you’re missing the most fundemental point; you can stand right in the middle, heck with the windup time you can actually go out, f3 the pet into the safe-zone and go back in if you’re both in melee with time to spare.

However, you can just as easily run out of the circle, away from the shockwave, with your pet following you.

The pet will f3 to the safe zone when it kitten well pleases. I actually often have to force it to be where I want with Guard because otherwise it just runs to my side with f3, and my side is not the safe zone center.

I don’t have the 15 points in WS. If you get to the point of 30 in BM and 15 in WS then you can’t really be called a berserker specced ranger with maximum damage output.

I find F3 works for me; so we’re at a stalemate on that point.

However, I suspect the next bit in your post is where our approaches clash; you want to be all pew pew pew, I prefer to steadily grind them down because almost all of the boss characters have been chugging the health extending potions, so that extra damage isn’t really going to work out for much in the long run compared to either you or the pet staying up. I strongly recommend you try 15 wilderness survival, because with protection on roll and vigour on a heal you become a total pain to bring down in pve, not just the pet.

Or, I can just switch over to my thor ele or guardian or mesmer and go with a team that doesn’t need to handicap itself on damage and kill the bosses in a fraction of the time it takes for your team to kill the boss.

There are solo videos I can link you of the facility and end bosses done in berserker gear by thieves and warriors and guardians. Wethospu cleared it in 11 minutes by himself. Add another 3 warriors or thieves and a mesmer to that group and see the kill easily take 3 minutes or less.

I don’t have problems dying on my berserker ranger without any points in WS or NM. Or using signet of the wild.

I could run the crappiest heal of Heal as One or a racial heal and still have barely to use it because all the encounters in this game have damage that is easy to dodge.

I don’t die. The ridiculously crappy AI I’m saddled with dies because it can’t dodge damage that is meant to be dodged because it’s lethal. To AoE that it keeps walking over when I f3 it back or recall it and send it back to reposition. And it’s absurd that to run my maximum damage setup (jaguar) I need to remove any optimal spec choices so that the pet becomes less garbage.

This is even more marked in dungeons like TA where Malrona’s projectiles land faster than your pet can be recalled out of the circles and will be randomly gibbed. Or keeping a jaguar up through mossman’s melee cleave or the hierophants melee smash in fractal 48+.

In fractal 48+ not even full toughness guardians can tank boss hits. A single boss hit can reduce them to 30% HP. The idea that a pet with less toughness and HP than a toughness guardian could do any better is ludicrous.

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

Loki.4871:

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

Don’t bother trying to sway him. He hates pets, beast mastery, and anything that isn’t wearing full berserker gear with 30 points in both their power and precision trait lines.

For the record, I run 30 beast mastery, 20 wilderness survival, and 20 skirmishing…and I deal pretty fair damage, and my pets do well in melee range.

Loki.4871:

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

I chose to play a ranger because I expected them to do AI right. You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

But alas, I was asking to much from the same group that made elementalists in gw1 wait over a year and a half before they started implementing changes that made them less garbage in the Hard Mode content.

Zenith.7301:

You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

This isn’t “doing AI right.” Those are all band-aid fixes that blizzard introduced after the fact.

Doing AI right tends to make the AI overpowered. It’s extremely difficult to make an AI that is competent, while also balanced.

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

This isn’t “doing AI right.” Those are all band-aid fixes that blizzard introduced after the fact.

Doing AI right tends to make the AI overpowered. It’s extremely difficult to make an AI that is competent, while also balanced.

Yeah, hunters are very overpowered in raids last I heard. That middle of the pack DPS performance is so over the top!

Zenith.7301:

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

This isn’t “doing AI right.” Those are all band-aid fixes that blizzard introduced after the fact.

Doing AI right tends to make the AI overpowered. It’s extremely difficult to make an AI that is competent, while also balanced.

Yeah, hunters are very overpowered in raids last I heard. That middle of the pack DPS performance is so over the top!

And GW2 doesn’t have raids, or DPS meters.

In GW1 we had NPC heroes with fairly competent AI. They trivialized all PvE content, even before you could bring seven of them. Olias was a better minion bomber than any player I have ever encountered, able to not only keep up 8-10 minions at all times, but also keep death nova up on all of them. All while following me as I blindly C-spaced my way through hard mode.

Yesterday evening i went on a daily run. My pet is in Avoid right now, so I “can” order it to go on a single target, and not to wander off when I get hit by any kind of projectile on the run…

It took 5-8!! seconds to the pet to react and hit the target I’ve ordered to with F1.
LoL?

Looks like I’ll use my pets as a self-transporting cooking material from on then… <3

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

This isn’t “doing AI right.” Those are all band-aid fixes that blizzard introduced after the fact.

Doing AI right tends to make the AI overpowered. It’s extremely difficult to make an AI that is competent, while also balanced.

Yeah, hunters are very overpowered in raids last I heard. That middle of the pack DPS performance is so over the top!

And GW2 doesn’t have raids, or DPS meters.

In GW1 we had NPC heroes with fairly competent AI. They trivialized all PvE content, even before you could bring seven of them. Olias was a better minion bomber than any player I have ever encountered, able to not only keep up 8-10 minions at all times, but also keep death nova up on all of them. All while following me as I blindly C-spaced my way through hard mode.

It has dungeons, whose completion time is the primary goal for people who want to squeeze as much profit into a game with such fabricated grind (legendaries, new RNG crap like 160g+ super rare drop jetpacks from a temporary dungeon).

DPS meters are there to show what everyone in GW2 has already observed one way or another. They may not have the concrete data, but the sum of experiences is there and consensus was formed, and not in favor of rangers.

Now do DoA HM (specifically Foundry) heroway or with actual players and tell me with a straight face heroes were better. Stop wasting my time.

Zenith.7301:

It has dungeons, whose completion time is the primary goal for people who want to squeeze as much profit into a game with such fabricated grind (legendaries, new RNG crap like 160g+ super rare drop jetpacks from a temporary dungeon).

DPS meters are there to show what everyone in GW2 has already observed one way or another. They may not have the concrete data, but the sum of experiences is there and consensus was formed, and not in favor of rangers.

Raids are not dungeons. Fabricated grind is optional grind. You only grind as much as you want to. DPS meters are for the “elitists” who are only concerned with shaving every possible second off their run. These people are the reason why I never set foot in CoF. These aforementioned elitists tend to also not be very good at adapting when forced out of their scripted farming runs.

So yeah, it sounds like you enjoy WoW more than GW2. you can have your raids, and DPS meters, just keep them out of my GW2.

Zenith.7301:

Loki.4871:

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

I chose to play a ranger because I expected them to do AI right. You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

But alas, I was asking to much from the same group that made elementalists in gw1 wait over a year and a half before they started implementing changes that made them less garbage in the Hard Mode content.

This isn’t WoW and more importantly, GW1 works has different game and class mechanics than WoW. I don’t see WoW without a dedicated healer, and if my memory serves, isn’t the warrior in WoW unable to use ranged weapons properly? So why should you expect a game that deliberately set out to do things different have a class that plays exactly like other classes, when the others such as warrior don’t.
You say you expect them to do AI right but then list things which are not connected to the AI at all!

As for gw1: elementalists were always overrated, a mesmer or necromancer (even before their buffs) were worse if you knew what you were doing. Hard mode just made it even more clear. Still, it could worse.. be you could be a paragon.

Quarktastic.1027:

Zenith.7301:

It has dungeons, whose completion time is the primary goal for people who want to squeeze as much profit into a game with such fabricated grind (legendaries, new RNG crap like 160g+ super rare drop jetpacks from a temporary dungeon).

DPS meters are there to show what everyone in GW2 has already observed one way or another. They may not have the concrete data, but the sum of experiences is there and consensus was formed, and not in favor of rangers.

Raids are not dungeons. Fabricated grind is optional grind. You only grind as much as you want to. DPS meters are for the “elitists” who are only concerned with shaving every possible second off their run. These people are the reason why I never set foot in CoF. These aforementioned elitists tend to also not be very good at adapting when forced out of their scripted farming runs.

So yeah, it sounds like you enjoy WoW more than GW2. you can have your raids, and DPS meters, just keep them out of my GW2.

Ah, it’s good you’ve made it clear that your priorities are what people should accept as their gaming choices.

You know what else is optional? A game with content. You don’t NEED to play a game with content or proper balance, but you like a game with it. So cut this little cute “these people are elitists while I’m casually dismissing their ways of enjoying a game” crap.

Better yet, since I don’t expect you to, troll someone else. I won’t be replying if this will be your line of conversation, getting on a soapbox about how awful people with an eye for efficiency are.

Loki.4871:

Zenith.7301:

Loki.4871:

Where did I say they could do better than a human controlled guardian, a class designed to be the ‘tank’? You went into the ranger class with ANET saying the pet was going to be a big issue. By extension, that meant the pet would be limited by the AI, since you’d be controlling the ranger and issuing general commands to it. If you weren’t willing to accept that, why did you play ranger? For ranged damage? Because if you did, why are you not playing the warrior, the class designed to be the best with hitting stuff with weapons on their own?
The ranger may not match dps of the damage designed classes (fancy that) but the Ranger compensates by being at least as durable if you trait properly. It compensates by being able to split their damage between two targets in opposite directions, nothing any other class can do.

I chose to play a ranger because I expected them to do AI right. You know, like world of warcraft does when it let pets scale fully from the owner’s stats and have 70% aoe damage reduction and built in speed boosts to stay on a target instead of lagging behind and self rooting when attacking.

But alas, I was asking to much from the same group that made elementalists in gw1 wait over a year and a half before they started implementing changes that made them less garbage in the Hard Mode content.

This isn’t WoW and more importantly, GW1 works has different game and class mechanics than WoW. I don’t see WoW without a dedicated healer, and if my memory serves, isn’t the warrior in WoW unable to use ranged weapons properly? So why should you expect a game that deliberately set out to do things different have a class that plays exactly like other classes, when the others such as warrior don’t.
You say you expect them to do AI right but then list things which are not connected to the AI at all!

As for gw1: elementalists were always overrated, a mesmer or necromancer (even before their buffs) were worse if you knew what you were doing. Hard mode just made it even more clear. Still, it could worse.. be you could be a paragon.

Pretty shoddy justification there. So despite the fact that pet classes function in edngame pve without an issue with WoW, because guild wars 2 has a different encounter design, somehow pets should continue to be a burden. Because god forbid GW2 adopt successful features from other games — they must be unique little snowflakes, even if it’s bad for the people playing it.

Next I’m going to be told that because guild wars 2 has a different grouping and goals system, that grabbing a LFG feature like, say, WoW, is completely unnecessary because, well, apple and oranges!

What justification? I’m stating facts. WoW is off doing something while GW2 does something else, which is clearly seen by all the dynamic events, class mechanics, visuals, ect ect ect.
My pets worked fine in GW1 in the endgame, as they do in GW2. I can happily have them along in dungeons too. God forbid you play the class the way it was designed and stop trying to make the class play like other games. You bet I’m going to throw the apples-and-orranges argument at you, because it’s entirely true. The reason I play GW2 (and played GW1) is exactly because it doesn’t play like WoW. If you want to play something like WoW’s Hunter, why are you not playing WoW? We’ve all seen how well copying WoW and WoW’s features worked for The Old Republic after all.

Loki.4871:

What justification? I’m stating facts. WoW is off doing something while GW2 does something else, which is clearly seen by all the dynamic events, class mechanics, visuals, ect ect ect.
My pets worked fine in GW1 in the endgame, as they do in GW2. I can happily have them along in dungeons too. God forbid you play the class the way it was designed and stop trying to make the class play like other games. You bet I’m going to throw the apples-and-orranges argument at you, because it’s entirely true. The reason I play GW2 (and played GW1) is exactly because it doesn’t play like WoW. If you want to play something like WoW’s Hunter, why are you not playing WoW? We’ve all seen how well copying WoW and WoW’s features worked for The Old Republic after all.

God forbid games pick up successful features from other games.

Guess that level cap increase to 80 for GW2 was a total disaster because it’s like a total copycat.

You run whatever pet you want in dungeons on a deficient group that holds other people from speed clears.

I can roll a selfish bunker d/d eles in fractals and never die and occasionally provide some heals my team doesn’t need because they know how to dodge. I’m still deficient even if I don’t die.

I know people like you don’t get the value of maximizing efficiency, but if this game is to cater to hardcore players as well, hardcore ranger players deserve the courtesy of maximized output like other classes without being held back by their class mechanic.

This apples and orange argument is a very known fallacy that people like to throw out when the subject the analogy comes from is one they dislike, as you’ve clearly shown about your dislike for all things WoW.

I bet if this game had a model of ranked pvp with leadergroups and groupfinder, like WoW, you’d also be more than happy to spit on it just because that game you hate very much served as a successful testing ground for a working design.

Aaah, now I understand: you’re a “stop having fun guys” person, the one with the spreadsheets out who flies off the handle when someone is doing less than 100% potential damage potential.
I wouldn’t care about the PvP things you suggested actually; those are mostly convenience things and the ranks are something for people to work for in pvp to show. GW1 had those with the pvp skins remember?
What I do get annoyed with is someone shouting loudly about how a class I enjoy playing sucks because it doesn’t play like a similarly themed class from a game I dislike, and how it would be much better if it copies the game I dislike. Conveniently ignoring that other classes, and the very game itself, is designed to play different from that other one.

Loki.4871:

Aaah, now I understand: you’re a “stop having fun guys” person, the one with the spreadsheets out who flies off the handle when someone is doing less than 100% potential damage potential.
I wouldn’t care about the PvP things you suggested actually; those are mostly convenience things and the ranks are something for people to work for in pvp to show. GW1 had those with the pvp skins remember?
What I do get annoyed with is someone shouting loudly about how a class I enjoy playing sucks because it doesn’t play like a similarly themed class from a game I dislike, and how it would be much better if it copies the game I dislike. Conveniently ignoring that other classes, and the very game itself, is designed to play different from that other one.

Yeah, I guess people who have fun optimizing performance are not having fun. I’m done with this idiocy of “Well, I’m having fun, and if you’re not having fun for enjoying things the way I do, you’re wrong”, goodbye to you too.

I love how you dismiss the very idea of spreadsheets when running classes as if developers don’t use said spreadsheets to monitor and design these very classes. No, classes and all those numbers you see on the screen are MAGIC.

WHAT ARE THESE NUMBERS AND EQUATIONS GUYS I SAY IGNORANCE IS BLISS. NOW GO AND SPEC FULL CONDITION AND USE A LONGBOW AND SWORD/WARHORN.

AlexRD.7914:

Thread reviving should be insta ban

And let me guess, you’re also one of those people who’ll say “Use the search function, there is already a thread about this”.

There is really just three things I’d like to see at this point.

Longbow: Unless you trait for it, it has the same range as the shortbow but it’s out performed by the shortbow.

Pets: They just need to be able to hit a moving target. Kiting the pet should be about keeping them at range (cc the pet and/or speed buff yourself) and not about maintaining a normal run speed so you can run out of range in the time it take for the pet to do their auto attack.

Pets Again: There is no good reason why pets can’t dodge when the ranger does. Period.

You’re still missing the point; optimising the ranger to play to the best of it’s abilities is one thing, which you say you want to do and enjoy.

Complaining them like for like, finding they can’t match other classes that are built from the ground up to do the most damage in a fight, getting upset, and demanding that you copy-paste gameplay features from another mmorpg the game is deliberately designed to avoid aping to fix problems which aren’t even there if you can micromanage your pet and don’t treat it like a fire-and-forget missile is another thing entirely

So if you can’t successfully counter the case that Rangers are sub optimal and second class in Dungeons, you switch to attacking the messenger, really classy.

So where is this video Jon thought about that was going to be so simple to do that would convince everyone that Rangers Dungeon/pet woes are just a case of bad perception?

Taking so long to produce, guess it’s not so easy.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

So if you can’t successfully counter the case that Rangers are sub optimal and second class in Dungeons, you switch to attacking the messenger, really classy.

So where is this video Jon thought about that was going to be so simple to do that would convince everyone that Rangers Dungeon/pet woes are just a case of bad perception?

Taking so long to produce, guess it’s not so easy.

Or he has a full time job. :p

I am not attacking you, please stop trying to deflect my argument you still aren’t addressing or even acknowledging: the ranger isn’t going to work like a ranger in another mmorpg, because the entire game is trying to avoid making Yet Another mmorpg. That includes the classes. Where is the dedicated healer? Anet doesn’t want one. Why is the warrior great with ranged weapons as well as melee? Because Anet doesn’t want them to play like other warriors in mmorpgs. Why does the Elementalist get to heal? Because Anet doesn’t want them to just sit there and belch out spells. So the pet being something more than a token object, being made a larger, more integral part of the ranger (especially since other classes are not just able to used ranged combat, but are expected to generally be at least as competent) to define it is consistent with the entire approach to the game.
Furthermore, I play this game because it isn’t like WoW, as I have stated. If I like gameplay mechanics I go for games that have them, which is why I played GW1 and now play GW2: because I didn’t enjoy how other mmorpgs played.

I like how the Ranger is Guildwars 2 plays. I enjoy the pet is a big thing. I enjoy that I can use melee and ranged weapons as a ranger. I think it would be good if ranger got some improvements (hello Longbow) but by making the pet some token eyecandy isn’t the way. THen it becomes Warrior Lite and if people want to play something like a warrior, they’ll play a warrior.
If I wanted to play a ranger with a ‘token pet’ then I’d be off doing WoW or one of it’s clones that Guildwars II is obviously doing it’s best to avoid copying in gameplay. So complaining the ranger on it’s own can’t match the dps of classes specifically designed to be the best in raw damage, the ranger ‘needs’ to have the one thing that really defines it reduced to nothing but a vague token gesture isn’t very helpful and quite frankly annoying. The ranger should be better in other ways. For example, because the ranger’s effectively ‘split’ into two entities, actually stopping all DPS from a ranger can be hard whears other classes are a binery “doing damage or downed”. They can split their damage between two targets (or if you’re in melee or with a axes) different groups. Different pets can perform different roles without the ranger even needing to respec.
A warrior pointed out in another thread that comparing like for like can be misleading with spirits and that should be the way for ranger vs warrior. Rangers should be like that with warriors; in terms of raw DPS the warrior should win, because it’s the class specifically designed from the ground up to maul things horribly with weapons. However, a ranger should be better than a warrior in other ways, because the fundamental problem with wanting the ranger to match the warrior’s DPS, specifically matching it without the pet is this: the pet either becomes horribly overpowered if it says ‘as is’ (since you have a warrior’s capability and the pet) or the pet is (as I have already said) reduced to a vague token thing, undermining the ranger’s identity.
The pet is not perfect, the ranger is not perfect, but throwing out the bathwater with the baby isn’t how to do it which is what some people seem to want.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

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

There are lots of pages in this topic, so I don’t know if anyone said it already, but this is the elephant in the room.

PLEASE don’t kitten PVE for the sake of PVP, use different skillsets

Some people never leave WvsW, and cannot care less about PVE, and the opposite is also true, many people cannot care less about PVP.

But even if they did, no reason to keep the same skillsets in both, otherwise the professions will be never-ending nerfed because some idiot cannot kill easily “class Y” today, “classX” tomorrow, and so on.

And that affects the whole gameplay, not just PVP, where many people never set foot. We shouldn’t drag any problems exclusive to PVP to a dungeon in particular, or any PVE in general.

Separate skillsets!