Guild Wars 2

WARNING Slightly less horrible wall of text incoming. TL;DR IN THE LAST POST (Its ALOT shorter)

So since there isn’t a pet thread on the first few pages where devs can see them easily I thought I would go ahead and get one rolling. What I would ask from the community is posting your opinions on our current Pet families and make suggestions on how to improve them. (Warning Expect this post and other posts to be of middling to high length)

Some of you may remember my shout rework threads pre hot. I would like to follow the format from then as much as possible.

Ill go ahead and start and outline some of the issues rangers have with pets in general. My intent in doing this is forming a basis that we as a community can agree on to work towards improvement. I do NOT want to just push the ideas of one playstyle If I can avoid it. So when you make your suggestion think about how it will affect other builds both ranger and druid. And do not ASSUME any one build.

Ill be talking from a beast master’s perspective. As pet focused builds have been what I have run on my ranger since day 1.

The three primary issues I see with pets that come up most often are. Pet Usefullness, Pet UI, and Pet based traits.

First up is probably the biggest of the issue and what most people will recognize right off the bat. The usefulness of the majority of our pets. To put it simply. Its terrible. The vast majority of our pets go unused in most forms of content simply because they don’t serve a purpose outside of situations so incredibly niche that some players may never encounter them at all.

These issues can be gathered together in a few categories. Pet Reliability, Pet Sustainability, and Pet Damage Dealing.

Part 1: Pet Reliability

Part 2: Pet Sustainability

Part 3: Pet Damage Dealing

Tl;DR Pets need to be able to reach moving targets, survive being in range of those targets, and be able to land attacks on moving targets. Something most pets currently struggle to do.

Post 2 Pet UI

Post 3 Pet Traits

TL,DR (for the above 3 “posts”)

You could have used spoilers and had each section neatly hidden in tabs. Just saying. I haven’t read all of it, but the multiple walls of text aren’t inviting me to do so at this time.

I’ll comment later when I have actually read everything.

Wondrouswall.7169:

You could have used spoilers and had each section neatly hidden in tabs. Just saying. I haven’t read all of it, but the multiple walls of text aren’t inviting me to do so at this time.

I’ll comment later when I have actually read everything.

Okay I restructured the posts a bit. Its better but still not great. I am nearing the end of my day here so I am pretty exhausted but ill try to work on it again later. I didn’t design the original layout with the spoiler headings in mind so its difficult to place them properly within the character limit of each individual post “shrug”. Ill finish putting each section in its own spoiler location and try to condence the posts where possible.

Edit: Okay. I have edited out most of the major grammar errors, Reformated some of the posts (merged two got rid of one that served no purpose besides empty emphasis). My posts now also contain 40% less sarcasm.

And no that wasn’t me being sarcastic >.<.

Hopefully its a bit easier to read. If you have any more suggestions ill hear em.

Edit: also sorry to anyone who read it in its original form. It’s only after separating it I realize just how horrible it really was.

Well, I don’t think there really is a need to go the long way and describe each pet familly flaw. Pets are simply crippled by a few design flaw which don’t really have any reason to exist :

- Animation induction : players can move while hitting, pets simply can’t. they are slave of their animation and it hurt their whole capacity to actually hit a target.

- Cool down and cast time : most of the pets have terrible skills with cool down and induction time that seem pretty stupid. There is a huge need for a balance work across all of the pets skills, at the moment most of them are unusable. The game promote reactivity while most of those pet’s skills spit on the face of this design.

- self utility skills : the skills that our pet use without our consent outside of the auto attack are a pain in the a**. They either need to be removed, have an option for us to prevent our pet to actively use them or change the F2 skill in a way that we can chose which one we want to control.

- inability to dodge : Baseline, our pet should have a moment of blur when we dodge. Dodge is the very basic of survival in GW2, the fact that we don’t have any way to help our pet in it’s damage mitigation cripple it’s survivability.

NB.: I don’t think that pet based trait are in a bad place, most of them are pretty good but depend on how well our pet fare in combat. Beside, if I had just one pet trait to change, that would be invigorating bond, a promising trait crippled to oblivion thanks to an awful 20 second ICD. Reduce healing value to 1/3rd and remove the ICD (If dev think that elemental bastion is balanced then with this change invigorating bond will be balanced as well).

NB².: It could be also interesting as well to see runes set bonus also applyed to our pets. Perhaps, we could finally make some use of the 3 second induction, 40s CD ridiculously weak shout that our pets use with the help of solidiers runes or reaper’s runes.

Now that’s a lot to be read here.

I personally think focusing on Pet Sharing boons, buffs, traits, auras and effects from it’s master should become priority.
Pets should simply have all the boons and buffs we have. At all times and at every moment. If we enter stealth – so should our pet (they are more of a harm than help currently). And since it was declared to deal a certain % of our damage – they should. It’s our source of damage. Just like mesmers’ illusions scale, so should our pets.
Once this is implemented – WHaO can just go and have it’s function completely changed. With this change – all counter-productive traits and unfriendly design will disappear, too. We wouldn’t need Pet UI this way since we’d know which effects our pets have from looking at our own.

We need our pets to scale with everything we do since 30% of our existence (dmg, utility) is rooted into them.

The second very most important topic is tracking targets.
Pet attacks having a mechanic similar to Moa that makes a short dash (aka former sword) are a clear and probably the easiest solution that shouldn’t be that hard to implement. Only for melee pets, obviously.

By implementing these two changes – we’d erase most of our problems we currently have. Others are not as important. Definitely helpful, but not crucial to our gameplay.

This isn’t going to help the thread any but in regard to “Pet Sustainability”, I’ve been using Devourers a lot lately.

I believe they are our worst species of pet speaking in terms of damage but the more I use them the more I’m finding they are very effective at staying alive.

They have high toughness to deal with phsyical damage, they have a retreat skill which at least 50% of the time they will use as soon as something is within melee range and they also have a knockback which they will again use when something is in melee range.

Since their auto attack has a chance at applying poison and Refined Toxins applies poison every 10seconds, they’re also quite good at keeping nearly a permanent poison status on your opponent, even if they don’t do great damage otherwise.

I’m seriously starting to like them more and more and wishing that other pets had self-defense mechanisms similar to Devourers. It makes life a lot easier when you don’t have to constantly be concerned with the well being of your pet because it does a decent job at taking care of itself.

Speaking in terms of WvW and not PvE by the way.

EDIT: Yeah, after going the opening posts and my own, I’m redoing my suggestions.

• Glyph of Rejuvenation to also heal the Pet.
• Lowered F2 cooldowns on core Pets.
• Baseline Ferocity and Healing Power on Pets.

And lastly, make Fortifying Bond baseline. “We Heal as One!” can even be reverted back to a plain heal if this change were made or even altered so the heal extends all boons on you and your pet by x-seconds. Sharing boons with the Pet should not be locked as a trait.

Let me preface this by saying in other games pet classes like ranger are often one of my main characters. In gw2 as much as I try I can’t get into them. For me part is feeling like my character is weaker than the other classes. The pet is supposed to be our other half but often feels so clunky that we feel like our PC is doing all the work but at seemingly less power than other classes.

To that end one of the revisions I would love to see is pet behavior.
Ideally I would love to see this be able to be set by the player, potentially with the ability to hotswap between 2 preset behaviors we assign to our chosen pets. I would also settle for these behaviors being hard wired into specific pets, pet families would be alright as well but I feel would pigeon hole the entire family to a specific role.

Atm we have 2 behaviors. Ranged and melee.

What I ask for is more specific roles. Flanker, shield, bodyguard, cover, in addition to our current melee and ranged.

Flanker: tries to keep itself on the opposite side of your target. This wouldn’t have to be a constant thing but essentially periodic check to have the pet reposition. Useful to have pets that would do extra damage when at a certain facing of the target as well as for tanking pets to allow us to use our skills that have benefits for attacking the sides or back.

Shield: the pet would move to stay between you and your target. Useful to have tanking pets stay where they can soak up range attacks even when you have to move to avoid other things. Also useful fit pets that give fields so you can pay off them easier

Bodyguard: the pet stays at the players side and attacks directly in front of the player. Useful in larger fights both in wvw and pve. Would be great if pets gained cleave and could attack without a specific target, just like when we run thru a group without targeting.

Cover: has the pet try to keep you between it and the target. Great for ranged pets. Could also allow for more dps focused pets that have less armor and hp. Would allow us to protect them more than the traditional ranged behavior as us moving would allow us to reposition the pet to a hopefully better position

These coupled with the fixes to the previously stated inability of pets to attach on the move and the drastically slow trigger time of pet f2 abilities.

To me this would go a long way to making ranger feel like a partnership vs feeling like you are stuck playing with someone who is struggling to not fall asleep while playing.

Just going to repost your reply from another topic Wondrous, as I think it’s really important for the devs to see why the pets sucks so much. If pets are supposed to do 30% of our damage it’s ridiculous how badly they do against such a simple thing as a golem.

Wondrouswall.7169:

There is still this thread LINK that was done by Firelysm several months ago on pet DPS against the moving Golem in Heart of the Mists.

Data should only be skewed in regards to Bristleback and Smokescale as they were the only 2 Pets altered in some way since then, so the rest of it should hold up.

Also here is Firelysm’s test against a non moving target https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Community-knows-little-none-about-PETS/5679580

Dadnir.5038:

- Cool down and cast time : most of the pets have terrible skills with cool down and induction time that seem pretty stupid. There is a huge need for a balance work across all of the pets skills, at the moment most of them are unusable. The game promote reactivity while most of those pet’s skills spit on the face of this design.

Changing cooldown and casttimes of pet abilities is probably the easiest way to make many pets a bit more useful. It won’t fix other core issues, which are already mentioned in this thread and definitely should be looked at (i agree with most notes/suggestions here), but it could be a first step of improvement.
IMO barely any of the pet’s abilities is powerful enough to warrant 30+ seconds cooldown and more than 1 second casttime (for non-channeled skills). For most skills 10-20 seconds cooldown (untraited) would be more than enough. Especially since HoT, which made the game overall more “spammy” and reliant on low CDs.
3/4 – 1 second casttime gives the enemy still more than enough time to react, but makes it harder to avoid the ability by walking out of range without even noticing what they just did or accidentally interrupting the pet with AOE CC spam.

Some more concrete thoughts/suggestions:

Birds:

Canides:

Devourer:

Drakes:

Cats:

Moas:

Pigs:

Spiders:

Bears:

Wyvern:

Smokescale and Bristleback are ok and don’t need any buffs or further nerfs right now.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Now that’s a lot to be read here.

I personally think focusing on Pet Sharing boons, buffs, traits, auras and effects from it’s master should become priority.
Pets should simply have all the boons and buffs we have. At all times and at every moment. If we enter stealth – so should our pet (they are more of a harm than help currently). And since it was declared to deal a certain % of our damage – they should. It’s our source of damage. Just like mesmers’ illusions scale, so should our pets.
Once this is implemented – WHaO can just go and have it’s function completely changed. With this change – all counter-productive traits and unfriendly design will disappear, too. We wouldn’t need Pet UI this way since we’d know which effects our pets have from looking at our own.

We need our pets to scale with everything we do since 30% of our existence (dmg, utility) is rooted into them.

This a million times over.

I want to thank everyone here for there replies so far. It feels like most people agree that having fortifying bond base line or a similar mechanic (Like pets simply getting straight benefits from what boons we have on ourselves) is one of the things we need as a start.

Others have argued for AI changes to alter the behavior of pets (Their placement for example).

Still more have argued to have a base rework to the skills the pets themselves use. Ranging from alterations of there auto attacks to a new take on the roles of individual pet families.

Id like like to make a case for the addition to taunts on designated “Tank” pets. Such as the bear family. And the addition of soft/hard cc to brawler pets. Such as Moa’s. I feel the smokescale is a good example of how a brawler pet should be set up. A defensive skill, A gap closer, and an CC skill.

For example on moas I would like to add a small lunge to the auto attack (similar to how polymorphed moa works) as well as one to the peck frenzy style skill that exists in there toolset. I would also reccomemnd having said peck frenzy reworked so that each subsequent hit provides a damage buff to the moa that lasts for 10 seconds. Increasing its damage for successfully hitting. If such a damage buff became common in “brawler” pets it rewards us for keeping our pets alive and active in melee combat giving each pet type “Tank,Brawler, DPS” a unique feel.

Tank pets (such as bear) will provide occasional taunt while in melee. Making its effect on the field noticeable. And causing it to be something that cant be completely ignored.

Brawler pets gain damage buffs when they land certain skills in their toolset. Such as their special abilities or even there auto attacks. These pets start out at middling to low damage but the longer their in the field and actively fighting the more dangerous they become. Rewarding builds focused on using pets in PvP and offering damage boosts outside of PvP.

DPS pets start out high damage but are naturally more vulnerable. I feel theses pets should have some kind of debilitation built in (Like vuln from cat auto’s but it can range from vuln/chill/weakness/cripple) to their auto attacks to make them high priority targets once their seen. These pets should be enough of a threat that the enemy should be very tempted to turn and stab them them in the face or try to angle themselves to directly cleave them down.

What are your thoughts on this?

Honestly, I don’t play my ranger much at this point- and the pet AI and the associated issues are why. I just want to give that disclaimer up-front- I’m not a Ranger expert.

That said, the view from outside is pretty simple. Playing a ranger, 30% of your performance is almost totally out of your control, all the time, at the whims of all of the targeting and pathing and where’d the boons go and whoops-it-exploded-again issues outlined above. And while there is a substantial penalty associated with failing to keep your pet from gleefully jumping into the fire yet again, there is no corresponding reward.

Let me emphasize that: Pets are ALL risk and NO reward.

In PvE, if you successfully micro everything and babysit this AI and keep your pet alive and buffed and on target, you perform at 100%- your 70%, and its 30%. You don’t get a bonus for succeeding with it, only a substantial penalty if you don’t. Ranger, even with that microing requirement, is basement tier damage in PvE, ahead of only Mes in the rankings. The damage output of a ranger is half that of an engi or ele, and I can’t help but think that points to no real thought to the difficulty involved in actually managing the pet.

That seems like a pretty huge disconnect.

Shadelang.3012:

I want to thank everyone here for there replies so far. It feels like most people agree that having fortifying bond base line or a similar mechanic (Like pets simply getting straight benefits from what boons we have on ourselves) is one of the things we need as a start.

-snip-

What are your thoughts on this?

I mean, having ideas are fine and all, but that realization hit me which made me edit my post and suggestions is that: first and foremost, we should tune our suggestions back and focus on getting Fortifying Bond baseline.

Tragic does have truth in his post when he states that once sharing (at least) boons (and buffs) with the Pet is baseline as part of the Ranger profession, everything else can begin to be fine-tuned afterwards.

Just a suggestion on our suggestions now. Maybe hold the suggestions that would require heavy-loaded amounts of work and aim towards reaching 1 common goal that seems reasonably obtainable that will have a significant impact on the class.

Well, since I didn’t really think of many other ideas and I’m glad others liked mine I think I’ll leave place for suggestion to others but rather elaborate why Pet Buff-linking is such an important, a must-have even for us at this moment.

Most of it concerns DPS, so I’ll start with that one.

• Our class is being held back by lots of coefficients that are lower, auto-attacks included, just because as it was stated – Pets are supposed to be a set percentage of our DPS.
  But that has never been the case. In a game full of multiplied factors in our DPS, our pet is a set-in-stone number of DPS that will never be increased unless we sacrifice a lot of our personal DPS to trait into it (2 traitlines, actually. Two of them). Not only that – but it mathematically makes us scale only by 70% of other classes with all the buffs and boosts – because our pet is just not affected.

Which is why we need these buffs copied to our pets baseline

• Secondly,
  It logically makes no sense. Why is a character mechanic set to ignore any and every boost / buff / boon / advantage (utility) / scaling when we can’t trade it to come to Power level of other classes. Our pets are not companions. They are our anchors. And as sad as it is – this can’t be denied.

• Furthermore,
  This game is based on a 5-man-sharing system when it comes to buffs. Pets being the 6th target is out of place. If we just hypothetically speak of playing a 4-man content just to have the pet fully buffed… We achieved nothing but bringing the Ranger to the level of other people. And we had to sacrifice 1 whole person for this only.

But it naturally brings a question.
Wouldn’t it become too overpowered?

Yet the answer is a clear logical, mathematical and friendly:
There is no possibility it would.
~Pets benefiting from stealth and other various utility is something that can by no means become too powerful. We are currently the only class that cannot stop telling the enemy about our position while in stealth (the only one). Are there ways to prevent that? Sure, but it’s not fair we are the only ones that have to fight our own mechanics.
~When it comes to DPS – we are the 2nd lowest of the barrel. No, there’s no way this will suddenly get out of hand. In PvE, we need all the love we can.
In PvP, nobody plays purely buffing traits at a cost of utility. No one is playing Frost Spirit, Banners, neither Grace of the Land nor Glyph of Empowerment, food is prohibited… This change would only affect utility and not damage by any means. If anything – this would be a direct nerf to current NM/BM builds that focus on mighted pet, rather than personal DPS.

The only thing that stays in question is what should Fortifying Bond and We Heal as One become once we get this feature applied (and with all due respects to our Developers – this has to come to reality).

• Which now opens windows for you guyz for further suggestions on how to improve our pets via these two features that will surely loose their meaning if this comes to patch notes. I guess a huge majority of Rangers would agree that we need this to happen.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Shadelang.3012:

I want to thank everyone here for there replies so far. It feels like most people agree that having fortifying bond base line or a similar mechanic (Like pets simply getting straight benefits from what boons we have on ourselves) is one of the things we need as a start.

-snip-

What are your thoughts on this?

I mean, having ideas are fine and all, but that realization hit me which made me edit my post and suggestions is that: first and foremost, we should tune our suggestions back and focus on getting Fortifying Bond baseline.

Tragic does have truth in his post when he states that once sharing (at least) boons (and buffs) with the Pet is baseline as part of the Ranger profession, everything else can begin to be fine-tuned afterwards.

Just a suggestion on our suggestions now. Maybe hold the suggestions that would require heavy-loaded amounts of work and aim towards reaching 1 common goal that seems reasonably obtainable that will have a significant impact on the class.

Edit (On second thought reading OGD’s post and thinking it through I agree with him. Though it would be more work increasing the overall accuracy of pets is the best starting point. It won’t free up build diversity but it will make pets a better base platform WITHOUT trait investment which I believe is a better goal for the long term health of the class).

I do feel that making FB baseling is a good goal however. And its why it was the first paragraph of my post. The rest of it was more for the concept of generating ideas to increase the usefullness of pets in general by covering gaps in our various pet families. My goal with the later parts of my post was just to try to assign a “role” to various pets in the hopes of giving a direction those families can be balanced towards. Where as it is now all pets feel like their in vacuum’s which is why many of them seem irrelevant to actual game play.

I am fully on board with focusing on getting the boon issue involved with pets fixed first. But the purpose of this thread wasn’t to discuss just ONE possibility. But to cover a general range of issues inherent in pets so that a developer can look and see what we think on the various subjects without digging through pages of posts.

This thread is just the brain storming section. IF it is succesful I will make a follow up thread in half a month or so discussing the most discussed issues by the priority we assign them in this thread.

So I want to get as much feedback on as many subjects (related to our pets) as possible. That I can then put into a more organized post at a later date.

Imho, pets being able to land their attacks vs other players is of a higher priority than having FB baseline.

Fortifying Bond becoming baseline would be a huge boost to pet survivability and usability, as well as open rangers up to greater overall build diversity. Investing in Beastmastery to get the most out of your pet just makes sense. That is what the trait line is there for. But currently we need to invest in both Beastmastery and Nature Magic to get the full benefit of our profession mechanic.

Pets being able to hit a moving target reliably is the next big thing, as it effects every aspect of being a ranger in every game mode. Making pets resistant to slow effects, increasing their attack radius, and increasing their animation speed on attacks are all viable methods for making them hit their target before they waltz out of the pet’kitten zone.

As far as giving pets a designated role, I am in full support of Shadelang’s ideas. I suggested a while back that bears be turned into an aggro managing tank pet with access to a taunt of some kind, which would give them their own unique niche that separates them from other pets.

Where we differ however is where moas should be. He suggests they are meant to be brawlers, but I personally envision them as our sole support pets. They all have a passive heal and most of their F2 skills provide an AoE boon. To me this screams “support”, and that they should function in a way that makes them desirable to keep set on passive at the ranger’s side.

To support this I’d make their heal skill activate periodically while in combat, allowing the moa to provide small but meaningful heals to their ranger without engaging the enemy. This would encourage the ranger to keep the moa nearby and to use the F2 for boons, effectively giving us a pet designed to be held back with us rather than thrown into the front lines in WvWvW.

I feel categorizing what role each pet family should serve might help, so I’ll throw out a list of my personal views.

Canine – Control brawler/peeler
Bears – Tank
Moas – Support
Feline – Sustained DPS
Bird – Burst DPS
Spider – Ranged control/trapper
Devourer – Ranged condi DPS
Drake – AoE Brawler
Porcine – Brawler with foraged item shenanigans
Bristleback – Ranged burst
Smokescale – Melee brawler
Wyvern – Combo Field producing brawler

I have a lot more to say but will stop here in the interest of conversation and not making a huge wall of text, but I will return later.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Imho, pets being able to land their attacks vs other players is of a higher priority than having FB baseline.

Yes, I agree it’s just as important, since it’s the core problem of a different environment (buffs are mainly PvE, WvW / tracking is a core PvP, WvW feature).

But for one thing – I am afraid that a perfect tracking in PvP would cause a huge backfire from other classes. So in case we get something as “your pets will dash up to 300 range when performing a melee attack” that will be a night and day tracking difference – it should be glued into a choice. Like a BM minor (choosing a traitline) – which would thematically fit a dangerous pet.
But whichever way I’m looking at it – Wyverns, Drakes and some others would have to be fixed manually. Their problems wouldn’t get fixed by dash alone.

What suggestions do we have for tracking targets, so far?
~Dash for melee abilities
~Pet attacks are performed faster
~Damage is applied instantly, attacks have after-casts rather than cast times
…?

The only thing needed for pet to be able to connect with their target is to allow them to perform action while moving. We know that the engine is already here since except for a few skills our characters can do it.

They do not need to dash, attack faster or whatever, they just need to be able to continue to track the target while using their attack. At the moment, they have to :

- reach the target
- stop
- use a skill that root them.

The idea would be to just change the damage to be done periodically in front of the pet without bothering with the animation that hurt the whole process for who know what reason.

Tragic Positive.9356:

What suggestions do we have for tracking targets, so far?
~Dash for melee abilities
~Pet attacks are performed faster
~Damage is applied instantly, attacks have after-casts rather than cast times
…?

I’m always down for an increased attack speed modifier in Beastmastery, specifically, to replace the 10% damage modifier when above 90% health minor so pets can cast their attacks faster and gain an increased chance of landing their strikes.

Even though an increased attack range on pet attacks to hit more reliably seems as though it maybe an issue (depending on perspective), following the example as represented on Birds, I find this would be all right with those exact limitations.

The only attack Birds have that is longer than 130 range is their auto-attack. Other moves such as Swoop and F2 commands are limited to 130 range. I think it’s a reasonable start to increase the range of only the auto-attack of all melee pets to feel out the waters. Even birds can miss a moving target, which seems decent enough.

As for Wyverns, why not thematically increase the potency of their attacks to be a strong, on-point defender? Small things such as each strike of Wing Swipe applies 1s of cripple and Tail Lash can have its cooldown raised in trade for a 2s knockdown instead of cripple.

Being able for them to hit a moving target seems difficult without altering their moveset (specifically the auto-attack) and I have not seen Anet do that for any pet, ever.

Dadnir.5038:

The only thing needed for pet to be able to connect with their target is to allow them to perform action while moving. We know that the engine is already here since except for a few skills our characters can do it.

They do not need to dash, attack faster or whatever, they just need to be able to continue to track the target while using their attack. At the moment, they have to :

- reach the target
- stop
- use a skill that root them.

The idea would be to just change the damage to be done periodically in front of the pet without bothering with the animation that hurt the whole process for who know what reason.

This would be ideal.
But I was afraid ANet wouldn’t like it because of aesthetics. After all, pets already have a locked animation, that would cause an unrealistic broken system where pets would moon-stand while running.
During their Reaper reveal they mentioned the only reason why the GS ability locks you in place for a split second is because the animation would look broken if you could cast it on the move.

Dadnir.5038:

The only thing needed for pet to be able to connect with their target is to allow them to perform action while moving. We know that the engine is already here since except for a few skills our characters can do it.

They do not need to dash, attack faster or whatever, they just need to be able to continue to track the target while using their attack. At the moment, they have to :

- reach the target
- stop
- use a skill that root them.

The idea would be to just change the damage to be done periodically in front of the pet without bothering with the animation that hurt the whole process for who know what reason.

What if instead of the stand and attack method we ask for pets to be updated with some of the HoT tactics. I could see several of the pets benefiting from a pocket raptor pass thru attack . Imagine a cat that kept leaping and landing on the other side of a foe.

Others could have an attack with a short trigger range but would affect a slightly longer range. Long enough to reach players that move but short enough that dodging or speed buffs would allow you to evade if you moved the right way.

There are many valid points in this thread. Here are a few simple things I personally thing would help pets a lot and should be rather easy to implement.

• Increase the AA range to 300 or maybe even farther depending on the attack. This will solve the stop-and-go issue pets have and ANet doesn’t seem able to fix.
• Speed up certain F2 abilities which are known to fail way too often. However, this got to consider their power. Depending on their effects they shouldn’t become a guaranteed hit.
• Increase the baseline movement speed by 25% so they have an easier time reaching their target. I wouldn’t like it to be 30% or 33% because this would be a major ‘Screw you!’ to classes or builds who actually rely on being mobile and need to avoid the pets. Pets Prowess would instead grant your pet x seconds of Superspeed when hitting the attack button (x seconds ICD).
• Make it easier for Rangers to aid their pets by making skills which remove movement impairing effects also affect pets. I’m against an innate resistance or reduction to CC of any kind because it would remove any counterplay.

On a different note, pet stats need to scale with the Rangers stat to some extent. I know that this a very sensitive topic. But there have to be some drawbacks depending on the gear you pick. Period. If this doesn’t happen certain pets will always be underused to obvious reasons or worse – other stuff might get nerfed because of them.

Hey all Just want to say ill be making my follow up post some time on the 20th. In there I will try to collect everyones ideas into a more organized form while crediting the original posters of such ideas as well as any variants that were discussed.

If you have a preferred layout let me know (This is to both the posters so far, the people just reading it, and any Red/black poster that might want to give their two cents on a decent way to set it up) otherwise I will simply try to format it as best I can with what I have and everyone will have to live with it.

Thank you Shadelang for taking the initiative for this.

Any good looking layout will do. If you make headlines in bold and sort longer paragraphs by spoilers, I guess that’s pretty much fine.

Shadelang.3012:

Hey all Just want to say ill be making my follow up post some time on the 20th. In there I will try to collect everyones ideas into a more organized form while crediting the original posters of such ideas as well as any variants that were discussed.

If you have a preferred layout let me know (This is to both the posters so far, the people just reading it, and any Red/black poster that might want to give their two cents on a decent way to set it up) otherwise I will simply try to format it as best I can with what I have and everyone will have to live with it.

I would think main topic with bullets for each. Each bullet being a tldr version with a link to each original post inside a spoiler tag is probably a good way.

Gaile’s reply in another topic:

If you have ideas for the future, the best way to share them is with concise, brief descriptions. Posting walls of text is off-putting to busy people — be they forum members or developers. I suggest posting the idea in a concise manner and, if necessary, sharing details below that synopsis.

Take an example from the QoL 2.0 thread I posted awhile back. [LINK] for format, or even old feedback given for Druid during beta [LINK]

• Opening paragraph(s) of 1-2 length on what the thread is about and its significance.
• The suggested idea or proposal.
• Details and elaboration in spoilers with an average length of 2-3 paragraphs and each paragraph being 3-4 line breaks (forum format) or sentences.

Or as shown in the 2nd link, the title of a topic as the Spoiler’s heading, with bold sub-topics, followed by the subject underlined, and if need, bullet points for further or simpler elaboration.

Because that reply of Gaile’s that Frou posted is correct: Walls of text are off-putting. Even though a post can be long, spoilers help cut down on digging for a certain point or suggestion. This also means try not to have walls of texts in spoilers either, unless points are finely separated.

Since I got some time, let’s just dig in the pet’s skills and pet skills system (note that this is only a suggestion based on my own preferences).

Pet skill system :

I never found the actual pet skill system satisfying, the main reason being that the pets use utilities skills at the wrong moment and their overall performance are crippled by theses skills. Note that those skill usually end up being wasted and have abysmal impact on any fight.

The main idea behind the change would be to leave the pet with only it’s auto attack and give the ranger the ability to select which utility skill he want on F2. The pet AI having less “personal” choice to do should already help a lot in regard of the reliability of the pet’s behavior.

Pet’s utilities skills balance :

In attempt to put all pet into an equal footing in regard of the ranger’s traits, what would be necessary is to divide thoses skill into 3 possible skills from weak to strong, the weak skill having a low CD and the “strongest” skill, a long CD.

Core pets :
- Bird :
Swoop : reduce to 6 second CD.
Current [F2] : Slightly reduce damage on blinding slash and chilling slash, slightly improve damage on lacerating slash. standardise CD at 12 second.
Quickening screech : change swiftness duration to 20 second. (being able to keep up perma swiftness thanks to an F2 skill shouldn’t hurt any game mode)

- Dogs :
Crippling leap : Reduce damage to auto attack level or slightly lower, reduce cripple duration to 2 second. bring CD down to 6 seconds.
Current F2 : Remove offensives howl damage component. Remove support howl healing component and induction time. Standardise CD to 15 seconds.
Brutal leap : Just reduce CD to 30 second.

- Devourer :
Tail lash : change it into a ranged interrupt that does low damage with a 8 second CD.
Devourer retreat : reduce CD to 12 second evade for the whole induction time.
Current F2 skills : kept them as it is.

- Drakes :
Chomp : reduce damage to autoattack level, keep the self heal and reduce CD to 6 second.
Tail swip : halve current damage, reduce CD to 15 second.
Current F2 skill : standardise CD to 25 seconds.

- Cats :
Bite : this one is ok
Maul : reduce CD to 15 second
Current F2 skill : standardize core pet skill to 30 second CD. Mighty roar become instant (no need for any animation).

- Moa :
Frienzied attack : change into shattering peck, hit one time inflicting vulnerability. CD 6 seconds.
Harmonic cry : halve healing value, reduce CD to 15 seconds.
Current F2 skills : Standardize CD to 25 seconds. Make protective screech and furious screech instant.

- pigs :
Maul : remove bleeding, reduce CD to 6 seconds.
Forage : reduce CD to 15 seconds. after the skill have been used, replace the F2 by the bundle skill. Bundle skill affect the pet or happen at the pet position if it’s an external skill.
Brutal charge : reduce knockdown to 2 seconds, reduce CD to 30 seconds.

- Spider :
Poison gas : now become an instant skill that lay a poison field around the spider for 3 second. This poison field do not do any damage, it only unable poison combo. CD 6 seconds.
entangling web : reduce CD to 15 seconds.
current F2 skills : standardize CD to 30 seconds.

- Bear :
Bite : reduce damage to auto attack level, reduce regeneration duration to 4 seconds, reduce CD to 8 seconds.
Current F2 skill : standardize CD to 15 seconds. shake it off remove 1 condition, Poison cloud duration reduced to 3 seconds, remove offesive roars damage component.
Defy pain : reduce CD to 30 second. (This is a pet, it’s not gonna be gamebreaking if a pet become able to mitigate damage on a 30 second CD)

HoT pets :

- Bristleback :
rain of spike : become spike, gain retaliation for 4 second. instant skill, CD 6 seconds.
spike barrage : stay as it is.
Sharpen spine : stay as it is.

- Tiger :
Bite : this one is ok
Maul : reduce CD to 15 second
Furious pounce : standardize this skill with other offensive skills. CD become 30 second, double the damage component.

- Smoke scale :
take down : remove damage component. 8 second CD.
Smoke assault : remove might gain. 15 second CD
Smoke cloud : stay as it is.

- Vivern :
rework auto attack.
Tail lash : reduce damage, reduce cripple duration to 3 second. CD 8 seconds.
Wing buffet : reduce or remove damage component (that’s just wind) and reduce CD to 15 seconds.
Current F2 skill : standardize CD to 30 seconds.

This might have been brought up already, but anyway…

Pets needs incoming condition duration reduction baseline, with a trait that clears conditions on them, either x conditions/x seconds, or tied to F2 use or something.

Melee pets are often rooted and/or crippled in pvp, meaning their already low hit rate becomes a joke. If this is not a good idea, consider reducing petswap cd.