Guild Wars 2

Let’s start from the obvious.

~ Our pets are not perfect but can be useful at situations.
~ It separates amazing rangers from the bad ones.

But I feel absurd to see my pet a burden. We all know the cap of most abilities. It is 5.
By knowing this – we all know that our pet is a burden. Or better said: an Anchor.

• Our pet is supposed to be a straight 30% of our DPS (DPS pets like cats and birds) but when it comes to boons and damage boosts, our pet is not affected at all.
  But what is worse, ANet believes the pet to be a worthy object in this game. They believe it so much that they designed 2 mechanics in the game specifically to weigh us down to promote pets.

Axe 1 and Nature’s Vengeance. The boon the most used Spirit provides is absolute rubbish, I dare to say. Some others, too. The only useful might be Sun and Stone, but that’s not the point here. I remember them saying:
“It’s going to be a synergy with Fortifying Bond.”
“Yes, someone’s get it!”

I mean this ideology is extremely wrong. Pets are supposed to be our core mechanic we should be proud of. We are not fine with abilities that are useless for us and party just so that our pet can catch up to us. Plus if that is the reason – it could have been made in terms of “gives our pet permanent 3 might” of any kind. MDG system comes to mind.

• By saying this, I feel like demanding a meaningful rewamp of our core game mechanic – the pet. That’s why I ask for only as much as making Fortifying Bond baseline.
  [edit] Ideally if our pet shared all our boons with 100% of their duration, including food and nourishment buffs. Fortifying Bond can be replaced with a completely different trait [/edit]

I believe I speak for all of us when I say that I don’t want my party to be shortened of buffs because of our pets and that “30% of our DPS” should be 30% of our DPS even full buffed to stay on par with other classes that do not suffer from split DPS pattern (we have lower coefficients because of this).

Furthermore, I believe Nature’s Vengeance and Axe Ricochet ability needs their might duration set for longer period of time, so that the Ranger and other team members can profit from it.
In reality, Might from Frost Spirit is roughly 0,7% DPS increase (a laugh – just like internal cooldown on Frost Spirit back then), and Might from Axe has no value on it’s own – since if you want to set your conditions up (3-5 abilities), all your might stacks will fall and you need 3 seconds to get them back up – wasting half of the durations.

If Rangers are supposed to play with a pet worth it’s place, the pet needs to behave as a part of us – not as a separate person. In terms of scaling with buffs as well as not stealing our party members boons or triggering mobs at PvE skipping.*

I’d like other rangers to share their feeling on this topic. Feel free to discuss to your heart’s content.

Eh, I chalk this up as a lost cause. Every time sharing boons, buffs, utilities, and food with Pets are brought up, there’s not enough support there to get a “Thumbs Up” on the OP. Not only that, Anet has yet to make boons, buffs, and conditions on the pet visible on our UI. I don’t want to search for my pet and click on it to find out what it has during a skirmish.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Let’s start from the obvious.

~ Our pets are not perfect but can be useful at situations.
~ It separates amazing rangers from the bad ones.

But I feel absurd to see my pet a burden. We all know the cap of most abilities. It is 5.
By knowing this – we all know that our pet is a burden. Or better said: an Anchor.

• Our pet is supposed to be a straight 30% of our DPS (DPS pets like cats and birds) but when it comes to boons and damage boosts, our pet is not affected at all.
  But what is worse, ANet believes the pet to be a worthy object in this game. They believe it so much that they designed 2 mechanics in the game specifically to weigh us down to promote pets.

Axe 1 and Nature’s Vengeance. The boon the most used Spirit provides is absolute rubbish, I dare to say. Some others, too. The only useful might be Sun and Stone, but that’s not the point here. I remember them saying:
“It’s going to be a synergy with Fortifying Bond.”
“Yes, someone’s get it!”

I mean this ideology is extremely wrong. Pets are supposed to be our core mechanic we should be proud of. We are not fine with abilities that are useless for us and party just so that our pet can catch up to us. Plus if that is the reason – it could have been made in terms of “gives our pet permanent 3 might” of any kind. MDG system comes to mind.

• By saying this, I feel like demanding a meaningful rewamp of our core game mechanic – the pet. That’s why I ask for only as much as making Fortifying Bond baseline.
  [edit] Ideally if our pet shared all our boons with 100% of their duration, including food and nourishment buffs. Fortifying Bond can be replaced with a completely different trait [/edit]

I believe I speak for all of us when I say that I don’t want my party to be shortened of buffs because of our pets and that “30% of our DPS” should be 30% of our DPS even full buffed to stay on par with other classes that do not suffer from split DPS pattern (we have lower coefficients because of this).

Furthermore, I believe Nature’s Vengeance and Axe Ricochet ability needs their might duration set for longer period of time, so that the Ranger and other team members can profit from it.
In reality, Might from Frost Spirit is roughly 0,7% DPS increase (a laugh – just like internal cooldown on Frost Spirit back then), and Might from Axe has no value on it’s own – since if you want to set your conditions up (3-5 abilities), all your might stacks will fall and you need 3 seconds to get them back up – wasting half of the durations.

If Rangers are supposed to play with a pet worth it’s place, the pet needs to behave as a part of us – not as a separate person. In terms of scaling with buffs as well as not stealing our party members boons or triggering mobs at PvE skipping.*

I’d like other rangers to share their feeling on this topic. Feel free to discuss to your heart’s content.

If the pet’s health was the same in wvw as it is in pve, that would be a start, but anet doesn’t care one whit that the health is halved in wvw… makes no sense whatsoever.

It’s bad enough when our skills don’t work at all, there is skill lag in WvW and skills go off far too late, but when it’s Anet who stops the pets from receiving boons but can have conditions applied (!), it’s not an even match.

Add even more misery to pain, pets are almost always playing “catch up” to their masters rather than being at their side no matter what unless attacking.

And let’s put it all on the line – pets should not be able to attack creatures they would be trained NOT TO such as MOAS and even RATS without a command, blowing MANY skills instead of attacking HUMANS and THEIR pets.

Pet health is not halved in WvW, it is doubled in PvE

Just give access to the strongest alternative pet skill. Pets are amazing and without a doubt ranger’s synergy with his pet is what defines the skill level for this class. I can’t imagine every giving up my pet. It is an INTEGRAL part to how I play and that is how I imagine the ranger is supposed to feel. That being said it is absurd for us to be expected to control pet skills through use of F3 in order to maintain even the slightest shred of “viability”. It’s such an obvious change but is one that I have personally heard, “Do you know how overpowered that would be?” – Unnamed Dev. This was something that left me frustrated at the time. If that is the case, MAKE THE CHANGE! and then balance ranger around what you have done. Would it make the class easier? Yes. Would it lower the skill floor even more? Yes. And that is the unfortunate truth of ranger. On the spectrum it is arguably the strongest class for the true casual, yet the worst class for the veteran player. This is something that needs to be addressed. Who are we really balancing for? Yet all we can do is sit back and hope that druid can guide us down the path towards that ever sought, yet rarely found, “balance”.

Only real way that we can get any feedback on the core profession is if we give details for one of the BWE for Druid since we all know that Anet doesn’t review the Ranger forums. The post I made with suggestions from people on the Ranger forums on how to improve Ranger that I tried posting in the General Discussion section ended up being pushed back here; was hoping to gain awareness from other people besides the Rangers, but Anet doesn’t want that it seems…

Fortifying Bond (+stealth) baseline in addition to a F5 to controll a second pet skill would be golden.

But good luck trying to explain that to the devs. They actually had the nerve to introduce a fifth toolbelt skill for engies without realizing that it might be a good idea to give rangers the same treatment.

Eurantien.4632:

Just give access to the strongest alternative pet skill. Pets are amazing and without a doubt ranger’s synergy with his pet is what defines the skill level for this class. I can’t imagine every giving up my pet. It is an INTEGRAL part to how I play and that is how I imagine the ranger is supposed to feel. That being said it is absurd for us to be expected to control pet skills through use of F3 in order to maintain even the slightest shred of “viability”. It’s such an obvious change but is one that I have personally heard, “Do you know how overpowered that would be?” – Unnamed Dev. This was something that left me frustrated at the time. If that is the case, MAKE THE CHANGE! and then balance ranger around what you have done. Would it make the class easier? Yes. Would it lower the skill floor even more? Yes. And that is the unfortunate truth of ranger. On the spectrum it is arguably the strongest class for the true casual, yet the worst class for the veteran player. This is something that needs to be addressed. Who are we really balancing for? Yet all we can do is sit back and hope that druid can guide us down the path towards that ever sought, yet rarely found, “balance”.

It was John Sharp who made the comment in a PVP (IIRC) stream about two bears just eating the face off of everything if they buffed pets anymore than they already were… which just blew my mind. He is also the Dev that said they didn’t want to give Ranger’s more pet control because it would scare away new players (knowing good well about Ele’s attunements and Engie’s kits are far more complicated than having more control over our pet). Notice after Mr. Sharp left Anet we finally got the keybind option for aggressive/passive…

Speaking of pets…In the raid video was there no ranger present or perhaps the ranger was there as a druid with not pet?

Lyger.5429:

Speaking of pets…In the raid video was there no ranger present or perhaps the ranger was there as a druid with not pet?

Have you seen any ranger in any competitive environment? For 3 years now, I mean…

Eurantien.4632:

Just give access to the strongest alternative pet skill.

This. This just needs to happen. Pets would be far better if you could control this skill as it is often the one we want the most, at pivotal times, as well as also being the one we don’t want them to cast and ruin their DPS due to cast time or poor placement. +1

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lyger.5429:

Speaking of pets…In the raid video was there no ranger present or perhaps the ranger was there as a druid with not pet?

Have you seen any ranger in any competitive environment? For 3 years now, I mean…

Too true :/

Lyger.5429:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Lyger.5429:

Speaking of pets…In the raid video was there no ranger present or perhaps the ranger was there as a druid with not pet?

Have you seen any ranger in any competitive environment? For 3 years now, I mean…

Too true :/

Being strictly realistic aside – I haven’t seen Forge Engineer with drones, either.
Might be an intention to avoid spoiling these 2 until the reveal. They might still be thinking them over.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Being strictly realistic aside – I haven’t seen Forge Engineer with drones, either.
Might be an intention to avoid spoiling these 2 until the reveal. They might still be thinking them over.

Also true. The good news is the next reveal will most likely be druid so we can see what Anet decided to do with the pet.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Eurantien.4632:

Just give access to the strongest alternative pet skill.

This. This just needs to happen. Pets would be far better if you could control this skill as it is often the one we want the most, at pivotal times, as well as also being the one we don’t want them to cast and ruin their DPS due to cast time or poor placement. +1

It would for sure be so much more convenient if my eagle spammed its F2 skill instead of the speed buff.

Just let people pick which of the pet skills they use with F2.

Kjell.8379:

Just let people pick which of the pet skills they use with F2.

No, what we need is a F5 to slot one of the pet familiy skills. It’s such an obvious fix, and I’m seriously struggling to understand WHY Anet hasn’t added this by now. It’s not just about pet control, it’s about easier and more fair access to blast finishers and CC.

On demand bird swiftness, canine knockdown, drake blast, devourer knockback, moa heal, spider immob/poisoin field.. They should have taken the chance to implement this while doing the specialization revamp. But nope, an engie toolbelt skill for their elite (which involved designing new skills) was more important to them than adding the same F5 for the ranger just to give them access to skills that are already there.

I’m fed up with it.